PHILOSOPHIES  ANCIENT  AND  MODERN 


SWEDENBORG 


SWEDENBORG 

AND 

THE    'SAPIENTIA   ANGELICA' 


By 

FRANK   SEWALL,   M.A.,   D.D. 


NEW   YORK 
DODGE   PUBLISHING   COMPANY 

214-220  EAST  23RD  STREET 


CONTENTS 

CHAP.  PAGE 

i.  YOUTH  AND  EABLY  STUDIES:  1688—1720  .  .  1 
ii.  COSMOGONY  AND  PHYSICS:  1721—1734  ...  6 
iii.  PHYSIOLOGY  AND  PSYCHOLOGY  :  1734—1745  .  .  13 

iv.    THE  TBANSITION  :  1745—1772  .  30 

a.  The  Change  of  Literary  Style       ...      36 

b.  The  Seer 38 

c.  Swedenborg  not  a  Medium     .        .  .43 

d.  The  Spiritual  Diary         .        .       '.        •         .48 

v.    THE  THEOLOGICAL  WRITINGS  :  1749 — 1772       .       .      52 

Classification  of  the  Theological  Works  .  .  59 
The  New  Age 63 

vi.    PHILOSOPHY  AND  THE  SAPIESTIA  ANGELICA  ,     04 

Swedenborg's  Nvcum  Organum  ....  69 
The  Law  of  Correspondence  ....  77 
The  Spirit  nal  History  of  the  World  .  .  .81 

The  Five  Ages 83 

V 


vi  ,       CONTENTS 

CHAP.  PAGE 

vii.    THE   DIVINE   ALTEUJSM,   OR   LOVE   THE   FINAL 

CAUSE  OF  CREATION 87 

The  Great  Categories  : — Kingdoms  and  Degrees     101 

vin.    THE  LAST  DAYS  AND  DYING  TESTIMONY      .       .105 

ix.    RELATIONS  TO  MODERN  THOUGHT  .        .       .       .114 

APPENDIX 
BIOGRAPHIES 123 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 124 

Theological      .        .        -.        .        .         .        .        .        .125 

Scientific  and  Philosophical .126 

Collateral  Treatises  .        .        .        .127 


SWEDENBORG 
AND   THE   'SAPIENTIA  ANGELICA' 


YOUTH   AND    EAELY    STUDIES 
1688—1720 

OP  Dalecarlian  ancestry,  his  grandfathers  on 
both  sides  being  peasant  mine-owners  in  Fahlun, 
Sweden,  Emanuel  Swedenborg  was  born  in 
Stockholm  on  the  twenty-ninth  day  of  January, 
1688.  He  was  the  second  son  of  Jesper  Swed- 
berg,  at  that  time  an  army  chaplain,  but  later 
made  Dean  and  Professor  of  Theology  at  Upsala, 
and  thence  promoted  to  be  the  Bishop  of  Skara 
in  "West  Gothland,  his  episcopal  charge  em- 
bracing also  the  Swedish  settlements  in  America. 
The  family  name  was  Isaacson,  the  name  Swed- 
berg  being  derived  from  '  Sweden,'  the  name 
of  their  mining  property  in  Fahlun,  the  title 
Swedenborg  being  conferred  with  the  rank  of 
nobility  given  to  the  family  by  Queen  Ulrica 

B  I 


SWEDENBORG 

Eleanor  in  1719,  when  Emanuel   took  his  seat 
in  the  House  of  Nobles. 

Entering  the  University  of  Upsala  in  1699  at 
the  early  age  of  eleven  years,  he  pursued  his 
studies  in  the  faculty  of  philosophy  until  his 
twenty-first  year,  in  1709.  His  brother-in-law, 
Eric  Benzelius,  the  university  librarian,  a  learned 
scholar,  afterwards  appointed  archbishop,  en- 
couraged the  young  student's  zeal  for  mathe- 
matics and  the  physical  sciences,  and  offered  to 
supplement  the  somewhat  reluctant  and  chary 
provision  of  his  father  for  further  study  by 
aiding  him  to  make  a  tour  abroad.  He  was 
eager  to  be  released  from  study  and  paternal 
control,  and  to  gain  touch  with  the  real  world, 
which  seemed  impossible  under  the  limited 
resources  and  the  cramped  scholasticism  of  the 
university,  where  the  lively  controversy  was 
still  waging  by  the  Cartesians  for  the  introduc- 
tion of  modern  methods.  His  bent  for  the 
classics  and  his  youthful  love  of  verse  are  shown 
in  his  graduation  thesis  on  the  Morals  of  Seneca, 
and  a  number  of  festive  odes  and  other  poems 
in  Latin,  some  of  which  were  published  later 
under  the  title  of  Ludus  Heliconicus  and  Carmena 
Borea.  But  his  real  aim  was  for  a  deeper  and 
wider  knowledge  of  nature. 


YOUTH  AND  EARLY  STUDIES 

In  the  year  1710,  with  his  brother-in-law's 
assistance,  he  went  abroad  for  a  tour  of  five 
years,  embracing  England,  Holland,  France  and 
Germany.  He  spent  a  year  in  London  and 
Oxford,  making  the  acquaintance  of  Flamsteed 
and  Hailey,  and,  as  he  reports  to  his  brother- 
in-law,  "  studying  Newton  daily,"  with  the  re- 
sult that  he  became  more  and  more  impatient 
of  the  slow  progress  of  his  native  country  in 
the  mathematical  and  physical  sciences.  As 
for  himself  he  would  "  invent  something  new 
every  day  " ;  and  he  urgently  recommends  the 
Upsala  University  to  obtain  a  better  salary  for 
the  mathematical  professor  by  cutting  down, 
if  necessary,  appropriations  for  the  theological 
and  historical  faculties.  To  make  himself 
master  of  mechanical  appliances  he  took  up 
his  lodgings  successively  with  a  watchmaker, 
a  cabinet-maker,  an  instrument-maker  and  a 
grinder  of  lenses ;  and  a  list  of  his  own  pro- 
jected inventions  at  this  time  includes  a  flying- 
machine,  a  submarine  war-vessel,  a  quick-firing 
gun,  an  air-pump  and  a  mechanical  piano- 
player. 

Returning  to  Sweden  in  1715,  he  begins, 
under  the  patronage  of  the  young  King 
Charles  XII.,  the  publication,  in  the  following 

3 


SWEDENBORG 

year,  of  a  mathematical  journal,  the  Dcedalus 
Hyperboreu8 ;  and  in  1718  he  published  an 
Algebra  in  ten  books,  it  being  the  first  work 
on  that  branch  of  mathematics  published  in 
the  Swedish  language ;  and  so  backward  were 
his  countrymen  in  this  branch  of  science  that 
'  he  feared  he  would  find  no  one  capable  of 
correcting  the  printer's  proofs.' 

Before  leaving  home  he  had  enjoyed  the 
acquaintance  and  friendship  of  the  distinguished 
engineer  Polhem ;  and  on  his  return,  King 
Charles  XII.,  struck  by  the  genius  and  ability 
of  the  young  inventor,  called  him  to  the 
service  of  the  Government  as  an  assistant  to 
Polhem  and  as  an  extraordinary  Assessor  in 
the  College  of  Mines.  Two  years  later,  during 
the  attack  on  the  Norwegian  fortress  of 
Frederickshall,  where  the  king  met  his  death, 
Swedenborg  planned  the  successful  transporta- 
tion of  the  king's  galleys  overland  for  seventeen 
miles  from  Stromstad  to  Iddefjord.  His  pub- 
lished treatises  on  mathematics  and  the  in- 
dustrial arts  at  this  time  include  such  subjects 
as  the  Manufacture  of  Tin  Plate  and  its  Use,  the 
Level  of  the  Sea  and  the  Tides  of  the  Ancient 
World  and  Information  about  Docks,  Sluices  and 
Salt  Works.  While  associated  with  Polhem  in 

4 


YOUTH  AND  EARLY  STUDIES 

his  engineering  undertakings  and  a  frequent 
and  welcome  visitor  at  his  house,  Swedenborg 
fell  in  love  with  one  of  Polhem's  daughters  ; 
but  notwithstanding  the  favour  with  which  the 
match  was  regarded  by  both  the  father  and 
the  king,  his  offer  of  marriage  was  rejected 
and  Swedenborg  remained  unmarried.  His 
position  as  Assessor  at  the  Royal  College  of 
Mines  he  held  until  the  year  1747,  when,  at 
his  own  request,  he  was  retired  on  a  pension 
of  half  his  salary. 


CHAPTER    II 

COSMOGONY    AND    PHYSICS 
1721—1734 

IN  1721  Swedenborg  commenced  his  second  tour 
on  the  Continent,  and  published  in  Amsterdam 
his  Studies  in  Chemistry,  a  Prodromus,  or  fore- 
cast of  his  Principia,  wherein  he  attempts  to 
reduce  the  phenomena  of  nature  to  a  geo- 
metrical system.  He  published  his  Observations 
and  Discoveries  respecting  Iron  and  Fire ;  A  New 
Method  of  finding  Longitudes  by  Lunar  Observa- 
tions^ and  other  works  pertaining  to  mechanics. 
In  Leipzig  appeared,  in  1772,  his  Miscellaneous 
Observations  connected  with  the  Physical 
Sciences,  and  twelve  years  later,  also  at  Leipzig, 
under  the  munificent  patronage  of  Ludwig 
Rudolph,  Duke  of  Brunswick,  the  stately  folios 
of  the  Opera  Ph'ilosophica  et  Mineralia,  contain- 
ing, for  their  first  part,  the  Prindpia  Rerutn 
Naturalium,  or  New  Attempts  toward  the  Philo- 
sophical Explanation  of  the  Elementary  World. 
The  Principia,  after  an  introductory  chapter 
6 


COSMOGONY    AND    PHYSICS 

on '  The  Means  Conducive  to  a  True  Philosophy,' 
presents  in  Part  I.  '  A  Philosophical  Argument 
concerning  the  "  First  Simple "  from  which 
the  world  with  its  natural  things  originated  ; 
that  is,  concerning  the  First  Natural  Point 
and  its  Existence  from  the  Infinite.'  Thus  he 
begins  his  argument :  *  There  is  a  first  entity 
produced  from  the  Infinite,  for  the  finite  cannot 
exist  per  se,  therefore  it  must  exist  by  means 
of  that  which  can  produce  what  is  finite,  and 
which  is  infinite  per  se.  Therefore,  composite 
things  derive  their  origin  from  simples  from 
the  Infinite,  and  the  Infinite  from  itself,  which 
is  also  the  cause  of  itself  and  of  all  things. 
The  simple  is  the  first  entity  existing  by 
motion  from  the  Infinite,  and  thus  in  regard 
to  existence  it  is  a  medium  between  the 
Infinite  and  the  finite.  For  it  is  by  the  media- 
tion of  this  point,  or  most  simple  entity,  that 
finite  things  exist  from  the  Infinite.  This  point 
is  immediately  produced  from  the  Infinite,  and 
its  origin  is  purely  a  motion  in  the  universal 
Infinite  which  is  pure  and  total  motion,  and 
cannot  be  conceived  of  geometrically.'  Later, 
he  defines  this  origin  of  the  point,  and  so  of  the 
created  universe,  as  a  '  conatus  of  motion  in  the 
Infinite.'  'In  this  [effort  towards  motion]  lies 

7 


SWEDENBORG 

concentrated  all  that  quality  which,  is  capable 
of  bringing  into  act  finite  things,  together  with 
all  their  modes  and  contingencies,  and  even  of 
producing  the  world  itself  (Principia,  22). 

The  argument  discusses  the  First  Finite  and 
its  origin  from  Points ;  the  Second  Finite  and 
its  origin  from  the  Simple  Finite,  and  so  on 
to  the  Active  of  the  First  Finite,  its  motion, 
figure,  state,  etc.,  showing  that  this  Active  is  one 
with  and  constitutes  the  sun  of  our  system,  and 
that  in  like  manner  it  forms  the  first  elementary 
particles.  Further  on  are  described  the  First 
and  most  Universal  Element ;  the  Actives  of  the 
Second  and  Third  Finite ;  the  Third  Finite, 
or  Substantial ;  the  Magnetic,  or  Second  Element 
of  the  "World,  its  motion,  figure,  attributes  and 
modes ;  and  finally  the  existence  of  the  Sun  and 
the  formation  of  the  Solar  Vortex.  Part  II. 
treats  of  the  Causes  and  Mechanism  of  the 
Magnetic  Forces :  the  influence  of  the  Magnet 
upon  Iron,  the  Disjunctive  and  Repulsive  Forces 
etc.,  etc.,  and  the  Declination  of  the  Magnet. 
Part  III.  treats  of  the  Starry  Heaven  as  com- 
pared with  the  Magnetic  Sphere,  of  the  Diversity 
of  Worlds,  of  the  Fourth  Finite,  the  Universal 
Solar  and  Planetary  Chaos,  and  its  separation 
into  Planets  and  Satellites,  the  Ether,  or  Third 

8 


COSMOGONY    AND    PHYSICS 

Element  of  the  "World,  the  Fifth  Finite,  the  Air,  or 
Fourth  Element  of  our  System,  of  Fire,  of  Water, 
of  the  Purely  Material  Finite,  of  Vapour,  of  the 
Vortex  surrounding  the  Earth,  of  the  Paradise 
formed  upon  our  Earth,  and  of  the  First  Man. 

This  vast  work  of  the  Principia  marks  the 
advance  of  Swedenborg's  mind  from  the  scientific 
to  the  philosophic  plane;  it  deals  with  what  is 
imponderable  and  invisible,  and  what  can  only 
be  apprehended  by  the  imagination ;  and  yet  the 
whole  realm  of  elementary  being,  thus  regarded, 
is  treated  with  rigid  geometrical  and  mathe- 
matical precision  and  logic.  Swedenborg  calls 
his  work  '  philosophical ' ;  but  by  philosophy  he 
here  means  'the  knowledge  of  the  mechanism 
of  our  world,  or  of  whatever  in  the  world  is 
subject  to  the  laws  of  geometry,  or  which  it  is 
possible  to  unfold  to  view  by  experience  assisted 
by  geometry  and  reason '  (Principia,  ch.  i).  The 
successive  steps  in  the  evolution,  through  the 
procession  of  Simples,  Finites  and  Actives,  of 
a  visible  universe,  follow  in  rational  order  from 
the  assumed  vortical  motion  of  the  First  Simple 
to  the  stability  and  order  of  our  solar  system, 
the  relation  and  movement  of  star-groups  and 
an  explanation  of  the  Milky  Way. 

As  in  the  Chemistry  (1721)  we  find  a  science 

9 


SWEDENBORG 

of  the  invisibles  such  as  Tyndall  has  later 
contended  for,  treating  of  bodies  in  their 
elementary  forms  and  relations,  so  in  the 
Principia  is  given  a  complete  theory  of  Evolu- 
tion, embracing  Motions  and  Forms,  the  nature 
and  functions  of  the  successive  Auras,  the  laws 
of  Vibratory  Currents  and  the  Magnetic  Force. 

The  importance  of  Swedenborg's  contributions 
to  physical  science,  not  only  in  theories  antici- 
pating modern  discoveries,  but  in  principles  of 
permanent  value  in  the  pursuance  of  research, 
is  beginning  to  receive  extraordinary  acknow- 
ledgment. 

Of  the  doctrines  of  the  first  forms  of  matter, 
in  the  early  work  on  Chemistry,  published  in 
1721,  Van't  Hoff,  in  his  introduction  to  the 
Arrangement  of  Atoms  in  Space,  translated  by 
Eiloart,  says  that  they  embody  the  germs  of  the 
modern  science  of  Crystallography  or  Stereo- 
Chemistry.  Of  Swedenborg's  early  geological 
treatises,  Professor  A.  C.  Nathorst,  of  the  Royal 
Swedish  Academy,  says  :  '  Swedenborg's  contri- 
butions in  the  field  of  geology  are  of  such 
importance  and  scope  that  alone  they  would 
have  been  sufficient  to  have  secured  him  a 
respected  scientific  name :  still,  these  works  are 
but  the  minor  portion  of  his  whole  scientific, 

IQ 


COSMOGONY  AND  PHYSICS 

activity,  which  in  many  respects  was  far  ahead 
of  the  times.  For  he  was  also  a  mathematician, 
astronomer,  cosmologist,  physicist,  mechanic, 
chemist,  anatomist,  and  physiologist.  "What 
Anders  Retzius  said  concerning  the  Regnum 
'Animale,  that  it  was  a '  wonder-book '  in  which  are 
found  '  ideas  belonging  to  the  most  recent  times, 
a  compass,  induction  and  tendency  which  can 
only  be  compared  to  that  of  Aristotle,'  seems, 
after  the  experience  now  attained,  to  be  capable 
of  application  to  the  whole  of  his  scientific  ac- 
tivity (Introduction  to  the  Geologica  et  Epistolce). 

In  the  Royal  Swedish  Academy's  edition  of 
Swedenborg's  Scientific  Works,  containing  his 
contributions  to  cosmology,  Svante  Arrhenius 
makes  the  following  recognition  : 

'  If  we  briefly  summarize  the  ideas  which  were 
first  given  expression  to  by  Swedenborg  and 
afterwards,  although  usually  in  a  much  mollified 
form,  consciously  or  unconsciously  taken  up  by 
other  authors  in  cosmology,  we  find  them  to 
be  the  following. 

'  The  planets  of  our  solar  system  originate 
from  the  solar  matter:  taken  up  by  Buffon, 
Kant,  Laplace  and  others. 

'  The  earth  and  the  other  planets  have 
gradually  removed  themselves  from  the  sun, 

ii 


SWEDENBORG 

and   received   a   gradually   lengthened   time   of 
revolution  :  a  view  expressed  by  G.  H.  Darwin. 

'  The  earth's  time  of  rotation,  that  is  to  say, 
the  day's  length,  has  been  greatly  increased  :  a 
view  again  expressed  by  G.  H.  Darwin. 

'  The  suns  are  arranged  around  a  milky  way  : 
taken  up  by  Wright,  Kant  and  Lambert. 

'  There  are  still  greater  systems  in  which  the 
milky  ways  are  arranged  :  taken  up  by  Lambert ' 
(Introduction  to  the  Cosmologia ;  vol.  ii.  of 
edition  mentioned  above). 

'  It  cannot  be  disputed  that  the  real  germ 
of  the  nebular  hypothesis,  namely,  the  idea  that 
the  entire  solar  system  has  formed  itself  out 
of  a  single  chaotic  mass  which  rolled  itself  at 
first  into  a  colossal  sphere,  and  afterwards  threw 
off  a  ring,  which  through  continuous  rotation  at 
length  broke  into  parts,  these  finally  contracting 
into  balls,  planets — that  this  idea  first  found 
utterance  in  Swedenborg.  Kant's  work  on  the 
same  subject  appeared  twenty-one  years  later, 
and  Laplace  published  his  hypothesis  sixty-two 
years  later.'  See  Article  in  Vierteljahrschrift 
der  Astronomischen  Gesellschaft  p.  8 :  Leipzig, 
1879;  Swedenbwg  and  the  Nebular  Hypothesis^ 
by  Magnus  Nyren,  Ph.D.,  Astronomer  at  the 
Observatory  at  Pulkowa,  Russia. 

12 


CHAPTER   III 

PHYSIOLOGY   AND   PSYCHOLOGY 
1734—1745 

FROM  the  survey  of  the  universe  as  a  macrocosm, 
subject  to  the  laws  of  mechanics  and  geometry, 
the  author's  studies  now  reach  forth  to  the 
Nature  of  the  Infinite,  its  connection  with  the 
finite,  and  the  soul  of  man.  He  publishes,  in 
Dresden  and  Leipzig,  in  1734,  a  Prodromus  de 
Infinite  et  Causa  Finali  Creationis  ('  Outlines 
on  the  Infinite  and  the  Final  Cause  of  Creation, 
and  on  the  Mechanism  of  the  Intercourse 
between  the  Soul  and  the  Body').  Here  he 
carries  his  mechanical  and  geometric  method 
over  into  the  most  subtle  realm  of  research, 
producing  the  outlines  of  a  physiological  psycho- 
logy which  may  seem  at  first  to  assert  an  almost 
ultra-materialistic  view :  yet  he  says  to  those 
who  complain  of  his  reduction  of  all  things  to 
mechanical  law,  'It  matters  not  if  it  be  called 
a  mechanism,  provided  it  is  always  an  animated 
mechanism.'  For  this  term,  '  an  animated 


SWEDENBORG 

mechanism'  truly  characterizes  his  entire  view 
of  the  world;  a  system  shaped  and  dominated 
by  a  Power  and  an  anima  above  nature — as  a 
body  by  its  soul. 

Of  the  seven  years  of  travel  which  now 
followed  in  Germany,  France  and  Italy  he  has 
left  an  interesting  journal  in  his  Itineraria, 
showing  the  wide  range  of  his  observations 
and  interest,  from  the  working  of  salt-mines 
and  blasting  furnaces,  the  discipline  of  troops, 
the  merits  of  the  various  political  constitutions 
of  countries  visited,  to  the  aesthetics  and  ethics 
of  religious  ceremonials,  the  attractions  of  the 
opera  and  the  beauty  of  public  buildings  and 
works  of  art. 

What  may  be  termed  his  philosophical  period 
closed  with  the  production  in  London,  1740-45, 
of  the  two  great  works  The  Economy  of  the 
Animal  Kingdom,  considered  Anatomically, 
Physically,  and  Philosophically  (CEconomia  Regni 
Animalis),  and  the  Animal  Kingdom  (Regnum 
Animate). 

In  these  works  he  confesses  that  his  search 
is  for  nothing  less  than  the  soul  itself.  The 
search  follows,  indeed,  in  orderly  sequence,  as 
outlined  in  the  Introduction  to  the  Principia, 
where  he  says  :  '  Under  the  empire  of  geometry, 

14 


PHYSIOLOGY  AND  PSYCHOLOGY 

and  under  the  mechanical  laws  of  motion,  we 
place  the  whole  mineral,  as  well  as  the  whole 
vegetable  kingdom,  and  indeed  the  animal,  too, 
with  respect  to  mechanical  organs,  muscles, 
fibres,  and  membranes,  or  with  respect  to  its 
anatomical,  vegetative  and  organic  relations; 
but  with  respect  to  the  soul  and  its  various 
faculties  I  do  not  think  it  possible  that  they 
can  be  explained  or  comprehended  by  any  laws 
of  motion  known  to  us.  Though  the  world  is 
mechanical,  and  composed  of  a  series  of  finite 
things  which  originate  by  means  of  the  most 
varied  contingents,  and,  being  such,  may  be 
explored  by  means  of  experiment  and  pheno- 
mena, it  does  not  follow  that  all  things  in  the 
world  are  subject  to  the  laws  of  geometry. 
For  there  are  innumerable  things  that  are  not 
mechanical  or  even  geometrical,  such  as  the 
Infinite  and  whatever  is  in  the  Infinite.  We 
may  learn  the  mechanism  of  the  organs  of  the 
body,  how  they  are  moved  by  muscles,  tendons, 
fibres,  and  nerves;  how  the  undulating  air  is 
received  by  the  membranes  of  the  ear,  and  is 
represented  in  the  chamber  of  the  brain  by 
means  of  sound ;  how  the  ether  exhibits  a 
modification  of  itself  in  the  eye,  and  runs 
through  the  tissues  of  the  nerves  till  it  meets 

15 


SWEDENBOEG 

the  meninges  of  the  brain.  .  .  .  We  see  every 
emotion  and  mode  of  the  soul  exhibited 
mechanically  in  the  body.  But,  after  all,  what 
that  intelligence  is  in  the  soul  which  knows, 
and  is  able  to  determine,  to  choose,  to  let  one 
thing  pass  out  into  act  and  not  another,  of 
this  we  are  obviously  ignorant'  (Principia, 
ch.  i.). 

The  knowledge  of  the  soul  is  now  to  be  his 
quest.  The  Regnum  Animate  means  to  him  the 
soul's  domain,  the  human  body.  Here  he  will 
learn  what  the  soul  is,  and  the  modes  of  its 
abode  in  and  control  over,  not  the  body  alone, 
but  over  all  the  forces  of  nature ;  since  '  in 
man  the  world  is  concentrated,  and  in  him,  as 
in  a  microcosm,  the  whole  universe  may  be 
contemplated  from  the  beginning  to  the  end.' 

Of  these  two  works,  the  Economia  and  the 
Regnum  Animate,  only  a  portion  was  published 
by  the  author.  Of  the  unpublished  portions, 
the  treatise  on  The  Brain  (De  Cerebro)  has  been 
in  part  translated  from  the  photo-lithographed 
MSS.,  and  published  in  London":  James  Spiers, 
1882.  The  complete  work  on  The  Soul,  or 
Rational  Psychology  (De  Anima,  etc.),  has  been 
translated  from  the  posthumous  Latin  edition 
and  published  in  New  York,  1886. 

16 


The  author's  desire  to  be  guided  by  the 
simple  facts  of  nature  unbiassed  by  prejudice, 
or  by  the  ambition  to  establish  a  theory,  is 
shown  by  his  unwillingness  to  rely  upon  his  own 
experiments,  and  his  availing  himself  of  the 
highest  scientific  authorities  extant.  It  is  only 
fair,  therefore,  that  the  defects  that  have  been 
pointed  out  in  some  of  his  scientific  data 
should  be  attributed  to  the  crudeness  of  scien* 
tific  knowledge  in  his  day,  rather  than  to  the 
general  principles  he  was  endeavouring  to 
illustrate. 

Of  Swedenborg's  anatomical  and  physiologi- 
cal discoveries,  the  distinguished  anatomist, 
Dr.  Gustav  Retzius  thus  gives  his  judgment  in 
his  address  at  Heidelberg,  in  1903,  before  the 
Congress  of  Anatomists,  over  which  body  he  was 
presiding. 

'  Emanuel  Swedenborg  was  not  only  a  great 
expert  in  the  knowledge  of  the  brain  according 
to  the  standard  of  his  time,  but  in  fundamental 
questions  he  was  far  in  advance  of  his  con- 
temporaries. If  we  ask  for  the  reason,  we 
can  only  find  it  in  the  fact  that  Swedenborg 
was  not  only  a  learned  anatomist  and  skilled 
observer,  but  that  he  was  a  deep  and  critical 
anatomical  thinker.  He  stands  out  in  the 
c  17 


SWEDENBORG 

history  of  craniology  as  a  single,  wonderful, 
phenomenal  spirit  and  ideal  seeker  of  the  truth, 
who,  step  by  step,  grasped  at  ever  higher 
problems.  One  can  understand  more  easily  his 
life  and  his  work  when  one  combines  his 
achievements  in  anatomy  and  physiology  with 
those  in  geology,  mechanics,  cosmogony,  and 
physics.  With  this  as  a  background,  his  whole 
aim  becomes  more  manifest.  He  sought  in  all 
to  find  the  principle  of  the  unity  of  the  world 
and  of  life.  He  believed  that  this  fundamental 
principle  was  to  be  found  in  motion,  in  the 
tremulation  of  the  finest  particles.  It  was  this 
principle  that  led  him  ever  farther  on  into  an 
almost  universal  research,  and  to  an  insight 
into  the  nature  and  workings  of  creation  that 
was  truly  wonderful  in  his  time.  Led  on  by 
this  controlling  view  (of  vibratory  motion)  he 
arrived  at  knowledges  and  constructed  theories 
which  only  at  the  present  day  are  beginning 
to  receive  an  appreciative  recognition.' 

The  special  localization  of  intellectual  func- 
tions in  the  brain,  the  coincident  respiration  of 
brain  and  lungs,  the  vitality  of  the  blood,  and 
the  process  by  which  sensation  becomes  con- 
verted into  imagination  and  idea  by  a  series  and 
correspondence  of  the  subtle  tremulations  in 

18 


PHYSIOLOGY  AND  PSYCHOLOGY 

the  respective  substances  in  which  they  occur, 
are  among  the  subjects  treated  with  great  clear- 
ness and  lucidity  in  these  remarkable  volumes. 

The  Animal  Kingdom,  than  which  title  that  of 
the  Soul-Kingdom  would  more  accurately  convey 
the  meaning  of  the  original  Regnum  Animale, 
included  a  great  series,  parts  of  which  were 
not  published  until  after  the  author's  death, 
including  two  of  the  volumes  on  the  Brain, 
the  volume  on  Generation,  the  Soul,  or  Rational 
Psychology,  and  special  treatises  on  the  Senses, 
the  Fibre,  etc. 

The  volumes  published  by  Swedenborg  treat 
of  the  following  subjects.  In  the  Economy  of 
the  Animal  Kingdom :  The  Composition  and 
General  Essence  of  the  Blood,  its  Circulation, 
the  Formation  of  the  Chick  in  the  Egg,  the 
Circulation  of  the  Blood  in  the  Foetus,  the 
Motion  of  the  Adult  Heart,  the  Motion  of  the 
Brain,  its  Animation  coincident  with  the  Respi- 
ration of  the  Lungs,  the  Cortical  Substance  of 
the  Brain,  and  the  Human  Soul.  In  the  Animal 
Kingdom:  The  Tongue,  Lips,  Mouth,  etc.,  the 
Stomach  and  other  Intestines;  the  Nose,  Larynx, 
etc.;  the  Lungs  and  Pleura;  the  Diaphragm;  the 
Skin  and  Sense  of  Touch,  the  Use  of  Touch  and 
the  Sense  of  Taste. 

'9 


SWEDENBORG 

In  all  these  researches  the  author  was  content 
with  nothing  short  of  a  definite  knowledge  of 
the  soul  itself.  '  Bending  my  course  inward 
continually,  I  shall  open  all  doors  that  lead  to 
her/  he  says,  'and  by  Divine  permission  contem- 
plate the  soul  herself.'  In  the  work  on  The  Soul 
we  find  a  symmetrical  and  exhaustive  treatise 
on  Physiological  Psychology  ranging  in  its 
discussions  from  the  Simple  Fibre,  the  proper 
animal  essence— that  '  Form  of  Forms,  celestial 
and  immortal  by  nature,' — to  the  Senses,  the 
Intellect,  the  Mind  in  its  three  planes  as  Animus, 
Mens,  and  Anima,  and  the  Affections  proper 
to  each ;  the  Pure  Intellect ;  and  the  Soul  in 
its  Immortal  State;  concluding  with  a  sublime 
sociological  forecast  or  conception  of  a  Society 
of  immortal  souls  as  the  end  of  creation  and  the 
realization  of  the  City  of  God. 

'  The  end  of  creation,  or  the  end  on  account 
of  which  the  world  was  created,  could  be  no 
other  than  the  first  and  the  last,  or  the  most 
universal  of  all  ends,  and  that  which  is  perpetu- 
ally reigning  in  the  created  universe,  which  is 
the  complex  of  means  conspiring  to  that  end. 
No  other  end  of  creation  can  be  given  than  that 
there  may  exist  a  universal  society  of  souls,  or 
a  heaven;  that  is,  the  kingdom  of  God.  That 

20 


PHYSIOLOGY  AND  PSYCHOLOGY 

this  was  the  end  of  creation  may  be  proved 
by  innumerable  arguments.  For  it  would  be 
absurd  to  say  that  the  world  was  created  on 
account  of  the  earth  and  terrestrial  societies, 
and  this  miserable  and  perishable  life ;  since  all 
things  on  earth  are  for  the  sake  of  man,  and  all 
things  in  man  for  the  sake  of  his  soul ;  and  the 
soul  cannot  be  for  no  end.  If,  then,  it  exists  for 
any  end,  it  must  be  for  a  society  in  which  God 
is  present;  for  His  providence  regards  souls, 
which  are  spiritual,  and  His  works  are  adapted 
to  men  and  to  their  consociation.' 

'  In  order  that  a  celestial  society,  or  a  society 
of  souls,  may  exist,  it  is  necessary  that  there 
be  a  most  perfect  form  of  government,  namely, 
souls  distinct  among  themselves,  and  every 
possible  variety,  which  may  be  called  harmonies, 
between  the  souls;  and  so  from  such  harmony 
there  will  arise  a  consensus  and  accord  which 
shall  produce  that  entire  effect  and  end  which 
is  always  foreseen  and  provided. 

'  That  this  end  may  be  attained  it  is  necessary 
that  man  shall  be  allowed  a  free  will.  The 
cause  of  variety  of  subjects  arises  solely  from 
free  exercise  and  liberty  of  the  will.  Without 
this  there  would  be  no  intellect,  no  morality,  no 
virtue,  no  vice,  no  crime,  no  guilt,  no  affection 

21 


SWEDENBORG 

of  the  mind  or  change  of  state.  This  is  the 
reason  why  God  has  wished  to  preserve  the 
free  human  will  strong  and  inviolate,  even  for 
the  doing  of  evil  deeds ;  so  that  we  would 
seem  to  be  almost  willing  to  deny  a  divine 
Providence  for  the  same  reason  that  we  would 
affirm  it.' 

It  is  at  the  close  of  this  work  that 
Swedenborg  presents  his  forecast  of  the  Uni- 
versal Mathesis,  or  a  Mathematical  Philosophy 
of  Universals,  which,  based  upon  inductive 
knowledge  of  the  soul's  reign  in  the  body  and 
of  certain  a  priori  principles  governing  all  of 
the  mind's  operations,  extends  itself  into  a 
realm  of  pure  truth  beyond  science. 

'  There  is  a  Science  of  sciences,  or  a  universal 
science  which  contains  all  others  in  itself,  and 
parts  of  which  can,  as  it  were,  be  resolved 
into  these  and  those  particular  sciences.  Such 
a  science  is  not  acquired  by  learning,  but  it 
is  connate,  especially  in  souls,  which  are  pure 
intelligences.  The  soul  from  this  science  con- 
templates all  things  immediately  as  they  are 
in  themselves,  thus  whether  good  or  evil,  and 
according  to  their  nature  it  asserts  or  is 
averse. 

4  Unless  the   soul   were   furnished   with   such 

22 


PHYSIOLOGY  AND  PSYCHOLOGY 

a  science  it  would  naturally  be  unable  to  flow 
into  our  thoughts  and  to  infuse,  as  it  were, 
the  power  of  understanding  or  of  expressing 
higher  things  :  as  also  it  would  be  unable  to 
adapt  all  its  organic  forms  to  the  inmost  and 
secret  laws  of  mechanics,  physics,  chemistry  and 
many  other  phenomena :  therefore  that  such 
a  science  exists  there  can  be  no  doubt. 

'  For  there  are  truths  a,  priori,  or  propositions 
which  are  at  once  acknowledged  as  true  ;  nor  is 
there  any  need  of  demonstration  of  them  a 
posteriori,  nor  of  confirmation  of  them  from 
experience  or  by  the  senses.  The  truth  itself 
presents  itself  naked,  and  as  it  were  declares 
itself  true. 

'  The  mind  is  often  indignant  that  such  truths 
should  have  to  be  proved  when  they  are  above 
all  demonstration.  For  all  harmonies  and  thus 
all  order  naturally  soothe  and  delight  the  organs 
of  our  senses,  while  disharmony  constrains  and 
wounds  them.  So  it  is  with  truths  in  which 
there  is,  as  it  were,  an  intellectual  order. 

'Wherefore  if  we  were  not  overburdened 
with  the  fetters  of  science,  with  the  turbulent 
desires  of  the  lower  mind  and  similar  hindrances, 
we  should  be  able  to  know  truths  purely ;  since 
a  certain  consent  shines  forth  as  something 

23 


SWEDENBORG 

harmonious  and  as  from  a  sacred  shrine,  I 
know  not  where.' 

In  these  glimpses  at  the  possible  range  of 
knowledge  of  a  pure  soul  '  not  overburdened 
with  the  fetters  of  science,'  we  seem  to  have 
a  foregleam  of  that  higher  system  upon  which 
he  was  entering,  when,  through  the  gate 
of  that  extraordinary  experience  which  he  de- 
scribes as  his  illumination  or  intromission  into 
the  spiritual  world,  he  is  admitted  into  the 
conscious  and  simultaneous  experience  of  the 
two  worlds  of  man's  life,  and  into  the  sapientia 
angelica.  For  we  see  here  not  only  how  the 
visible  universe  is  regarded  as  itself  an  extension 
of  the  body  or  regnum  of  each  soul,  and  the 
tremulations  proceeding  from  the  sun  being 
by  a  continuous  series  of  media  and  forms 
conveyed  to  the  senses  and  so  subjected  to 
the  soul's  control,  but  beyond  the  physical 
world  there  lies  yet  the  '  shrine,  I  know  not 
where,'  of  higher  essences  and  higher  know- 
ledges, which  yet  must  have  a  place  in  a 
science  which  is  truly  perfect  and  universal. 

Throughout  the  whole  philosophic  period  the 
devout  and  worshipping  spirit  of  a  seeker 
after  not  only  the  soul  but  God,  its  Author,  is 
everywhere  manifest.  '  No  man/  he  writes, 

24 


PHYSIOLOGY  AND  PSYCHOLOGY 

'  can  be  a  complete  and  truly  learned  philosopher 
without  the  utmost  devotion  to  the  Supreme 
Being.  True  philosophy  and  contempt  of  God 
are  two  opposites.'  The  conception  of  man  in 
his  state  of  integrity  as  the  true  philosopher, 
portrayed  in  the  Introduction  to  the  Principia, 
will  hardly  find  a  rival  in  literature  for  great- 
ness of  theme  couched  in  sublime  simplicity  of 
language. 

{  When  the  most  subtle  active  principle  of 
man,  by  the  providence  of  God,  clothed  itself 
with  a  body,  and  added,  by  degrees,  parts 
upon  parts,  all  the  motions  in  the  most  subtle 
elements  which  were  present  would  necessarily 
move  or  affect  that  extremely  yielding  and 
tender  substance,  and  would  gradually  impress 
themselves  and  their  own  mechanism  upon 
it.  ...  The  man  thus  formed,  in  whom  all  the 
parts  were  co-ordinated  to  receive  the  motions 
of  all  the  elements,  and  to  convey  them  success- 
fully when  received  through  a  contiguous 
medium  to  the  extremely  subtle  active  principle, 
must  be  deemed  the  most  perfect  and  the  first 
of  all  men,  being  one  in  whom  the  connection 
of  ends  and  means  was  continuous.  So  perfect 
a  material  and  active  being  would  by  the  senses 
alone  in  a  short  time  become  possessed  of  all  the 

25 


SWEDENBORG 

philosophy  and  experimental  science  natural  to 
him  ;  for  whatever  could  present  itself  to  his 
senses  would  immediately  flow,  by  connection 
and  contiguity,  to  his  extremely  subtle  and 
active  first  principle.  .  .  . 

'  I  have  said  that,  in  his  state  of  integrity, 
man  was  master  of  a  philosophy,  or  worldly 
knowledge,  and  this  too  of  himself,  by  virtue 
of  the  perfect  mechanism  of  his  organization, 
that  is,  by  nature ;  and  thus  being  furnished 
with  such  excellent  senses,  nothing  could  be 
concealed  from  him,  because  he  was  formed 
according  to  all  the  motions  and  operations  of 
the  world  and  nature.  I  have  said  further, 
that  nothing  could  exist  in  the  world,  from  the 
regular  connection  of  causes,  which  would  not 
instantly  flow,  as  through  a  most  clear  and 
pellucid  medium,  with  a  certain  sensation,  to 
the  mind;  that  is,  that  all  the  sensations  of 
each  of  his  organs  would  penetrate  to  their 
most  subtle  principle,  without  delay,  confusion, 
or  obscurity.  But  when  every  modification  in 
the  world,  of  whatsoever  kind,  had  thus  arrived 
at  its  ultimate,  or  at  his  soul,  it  necessarily 
follows  that  his  knowledge  and  attainments 
would  stop  there,  and  that  he  would  regard 
and  venerate,  with  a  most  profound  admiration, 

26 


PHYSIOLOGY  AND  PSYCHOLOGY 

those  other  and  infinite  things  that  exceeded 
the  bounds  of  his  intelligence  ;  that  is  to  say, 
that  most  vast  Infinite — infinitely  intelligent, 
infinitely  provident,  which  begins  where  man 
and  his  finite  faculties,  intelligence  and  provi- 
dence terminate :  he  would  see  that  in  this 
Infinite  all  things  have  their  being,  and  that 
from  it  all  things  have  their  existence.  .  .  . 

'  We  may  therefore  conclude,  again,  that  the 
wiser  a  man  is,  the  greater  are  his  veneration 
for  and  love  of  the  Deity.  His  delights  wholly 
terminate  in  the  love  of  God — a  love  which 
exhausts  and  replenishes  all  sense  of  delight. 
All  the  delights  of  the  world,  resulting  from 
its  variety,  are  nothing  unless  the  mind  also 
partakes  of  them;  for  no  human  delights  can 
be  real  without  the  participation  of  the  soul, 
since  the  more  refined  delights  are  lacking : 
and  the  delights  which  the  body  and  soul  are 
capable  of  enjoying  together  are  not  genuine 
and  true  unless  they  have  some  further  con- 
nection, and  terminate  in  the  veneration  and 
love  of  God ;  that  is,  unless  they  have  reference 
to  this  love  and  ultimate  end,  in  a  connection 
with  which  the  sense  of  delight  most  essentially 
consists.' 

It  would  be  a  grave  misconception,  but  one 
27 


SWEDENBORG 

into  which  it  would  be  easy  to  fall,  at  this 
stage,  to  identify  this  knowledge  declared  by 
Swedenborg  as  that  to  be  enjoyed  by  '  those 
souls  which  are  pure  intelligences'  with  the 
immediate  knowledge  of  the  Gnostics,  or  of 
the  various  schools  of  theosophy  and  occultism 
which  prevail  in  the  world  to-day.  It  is  not 
the  exceptional  individual  in  this  world  who  is 
to  enjoy  this  supreme  vision  by  means  of  some 
process  of  self-discipline  or  self-abnegation:  it 
is  rather  the  soul-principle  in  every  individual 
that  at  all  times  possesses  the  universal  know- 
ledge, as  that  of  a  queen  in  her  realm,  and 
that  makes  the  mind  and  the  senses  in  their 
respective  lower  planes  to  acquire  a  knowledge 
of  both  the  macrocosm  and  the  microcosm — of 
the  universe  at  large  and  of  the  smaller  but 
equally  perfect  universe  of  its  own  body.  This 
knowledge  even  includes  many  things  that 
never  come  to  the  individual's  conscious  in- 
telligence, but  remain  in  the  secret  and  sacred 
sanctuary  of  the  subconscious,  where  only 
the  universal  control  of  a  divine  guardian  is 
active. 

From  the  mysticism,  both  of  the  Gnostics 
of  past  ages  and  of  the  Orientalists  of  to-day, 
Swedenborg  must  be  entirely  sundered,  for  it 

28 


PHYSIOLOGY  AND  PSYCHOLOGY 

is  from  an  utterly  different  source,  and  by 
another  experience  altogether,  and  one  quite 
unforeseen  by  himself,  that  he  is  to  learn  the 
true  nature  of  the  soul  and  of  her  superior 
knowledge. 


29 


CHAPTER    IV 

THE    TRANSITION 
1745—1772 

HAD  Swedenborg's  labours  ceased  at  this  point, 
the  knowledge  of  the  soul  would  have  remained 
where  his  illustrious  predecessors  in  these  in- 
vestigations, from  Plato  down,  had  left  it,  and 
where  Kant,  his  contemporary,  acknowledged 
it  must  ever  be  left,  so  far  as  the  power  of 
pure  reason  is  concerned — a  sublime  speculation 
without  the  elements  of  certainty  and  reality. 
Swedenborg's  discussion  of  the  nature  of  the 
Pure  Intellect  would  have,  side  by  side  with 
Kant's  Critique  of  Pure  Reason,  challenged 
in  friendly  rivalry  the  admiration  of  the  world, 
and  the  resemblance  which  Kant  admits  that  he 
found  between  many  of  his  principles  and  those 
of  Swedenborg  would  have  resulted  possibly  in 
the  public's  acceptance  of  Swedenborg's  as  the 
safer,  because  more  logical,  guide  in  these  trans- 
cendental paths.1 

1  '  The  system  of  Swedenborg  is,  unfortunately,  very  similar  to 
my  own  philosophy.     It  is  not  impossible  that  my  rational  views 

30 


THE    TRANSITION 

For  the  abundant  data  recently  brought  to 
light  touching  Kant's  relation  to  Swedenborg, 
including  his  direct  allusions  to  Swedenborg 
and  the  unmistakable  borrowings  from  him,  see 
Kant's  Lectures  on  Psychology  in  Carl  du  Prel's 
Edition:  Leipsic,  1889;  P.  von  Lind's  Karri's 
Mystische  Weltanschauung:  Munich,  1892;  Heinze's 
Observations  on  the  Lectures  of  1790-91  on  Rational 
Psychology  and  on  the  Lectures  on  Metaphysics;  in 
the  Abhandlungen  der  Sachsischen  Oesellschaft  der 
Wissenscha/ten :  Leipzig,  1894.  For  a  full  dis- 
cussion of  these  see  the  Introduction  to  Kant's 
Dreams  of  a  Spirit  Seer,  translated  by  Emanuel 
Goerwitz ;  Swan  Sonnenschein  &  Co. :  London, 
1900. 

But  the  '  contemplation  of  the  soul  itself '  was 
to  come  to  Swedenborg  in  quite  another  way, 
and  his  transition  from  the  attitude  of  the 
rigidly  mechanical  physicist  and  the  speculative 
philosopher  to  that  of  the  illumined  seer  and 
the  exponent  of  a  philosophy  no  longer  human 
only,  but  angelic  —  constitutes  an  experience 
unique  in  the  annals  of  human  thought.  It 

may  be  considered  absurd  because  of  that  affinity.  As  to  the 
offensive  comparison,  I  declare  we  must  either  suppose  greater 
intelligence  and  truth  at  the  basis  of  Swedenborg's  writings  than 
first  impressions  excite,  or  that  it  is  a  mere  accident  when  he 
coincides  with  my  system  '  (  Works  :  Leipsic,  vol.  iii.  p.  95, 1838). 

31 


SWEDENBORG 

involves  a  self-renunciation,  a  quenching  of  the 
loftiest  ambitions  of  the  unaided  human  intellect, 
which  is  in  itself  tragical.  The  principle  in  his 
philosophy  of  Discrete  Degrees,  viz.  that  the 
order  of  influx  is  from  within  outward,  from 
centre  to  circumference,  from  the  spiritual  to 
the  natural,  and  not  the  reverse,  was  to  claim 
for  its  illustrious  first  martyr  the  author  of 
these  sublime  researches,  who  had  boldly  aspired 
to  open  all  doors  and  force  an  access  to  the  soul 
itself  through  the  avenues  of  natural  experi- 
mental knowledge.  Not,  however,  as  in  Kant, 
was  the  quest  to  go  for  ever  unrewarded  and  be 
dogmatically  proscribed.  Swedenborg  claims 
that  in  himself  a  new  kind  of  human,  nay,  even 
experimental  knowledge  was  granted  to  man- 
kind. Religion  and  a  knowledge  of  the  soul,  of 
immortality  and  of  a  spiritual  world  of  objective 
substantiality  were  indeed  to  be  enjoyed  within 
the  '  bounds  of  practical  reason,'  but  through 
'things  seen  and  heard,'  by  the  extraordinary 
opening  of  the  spiritual  senses  of  a  man  to 
the  experience  of  the  unseen  world  of  spirit 
and  all  its  realities,  and  to  a  rational  under- 
standing of  the  laws  of  that  world. 

It  was  in  the  year  1744,  at  the  very  time  when 
he  was  diligently  pursuing  his  duties  as  Assessor 

32 


THE    TBANSITION 

in  the  College  of  Mines,  corresponding  with 
the  Academies  of  Science  at  Paris,  St.  Peters- 
burg and  Stockholm,  and  contributing  papers 
on  important  civic  and  national  questions  in  the 
House  of  Nobles  of  the  Swedish  Parliament, 
that  he  heard,  as  he  declares,  in  the  midst  of 
his  most  ambitious  researches  into  the  nature 
of  the  human  body  and  of  the  soul  itself,  the 
voice  of  God  bidding  him  to  lay  down  all  his 
ambitious  strivings  in  science,  to  close  his  great 
books  the  Principia,  the  Animal  Kingdom,  and 
the  Soul,  and  to  open  one  Book  alone  hence- 
forth—  the  Holy  Scripture  —  and  seek  there 
what,  by  a  special,  divine  illumination,  should 
be  revealed  to  him  as  the  Word  of  God  in 
its  internal  and  spiritual  sense.  The  voice  was 
reverently  heard  and  obeyed.  With  awful 
interior  struggles  of  soul,  in  which  worldly  and 
intellectual  ambition  fought  with  the  impulse 
to  this  higher  calling,  nights  and  days  passed 
in  agony  until  at  length,  on  an  Easter  Sunday 
in  April  1744,  he  goes  to  the  Holy  Supper  and 
hears  the  hymn,  'Jesus  is  my  best  of  friends,' 
and  on  returning  it  seems  to  him  '  as  if  the 
buds  had  opened  and  were  green.'  In  the 
restless  night  that  followed  there  came  a  feeling 
of  holiest  peace,  'as  if  he  were  in  heaven ; 
D  33 


and  lie  can  only  cry  out  "  Holy,  holy,  holy, 
Lord  God  of  Hosts !  Praise  and  honour  and 
glory  be  to  the  Highest !  "  Thenceforward  he 
said,  '  I  accepted  the  following  creed :  God's 
will  be  done  !  I  am  Thine  and  not  mine.  God 
give  His  grace  for  this  work,  for  it  is  not 
mine ' !  (Doc.  vol.  ii.  and  pp.  164,  172). 

Then  comes  the  vaster  journey,  the  greater 
exploration  in  which,  at  the  call  of  his  Maker, 
this  spiritual  Columbus  explores  the  living 
spheres  of  the  other  world,  beholds  the  structure, 
the  laws,  the  life  of  heaven,  the  vast  relation 
of  correspondence  existing  between  the  spiritual 
and  natural  worlds,  and  the  intimate  and 
momentous  relation  between  our  present  life 
and  the  future  life  for  which  it  is  shaping  us, 
for  good  or  for  bad,  in  the  world  to  come. 

The  change  in  Swedenborg's  study  from  the 
science  of  nature  to  that  of  the  spiritual  world 
and  of  divine  revelation  is  not  without  its 
parallels  in  the  case  of  his  great  contemporaries 
Leibnitz  and  Newton,  both  of  whom  in  their 
later  period  devoted  themselves  to  theology 
and  to  the  explanation  of  Scriptural  prophecies. 
The  remarkable  feature  of  Swedenborg's  case 
was  that,  while  his  spiritual  quest  involved  the 
abnegation  of  all  pride  of  invention  or  of 

34 


THE    TRANSITION 

creation,  so  that  he  '  was  not  permitted  to  be 
taught  even  by  any  angel,  but  by  the  Lord  alone 
while  reading  the  Word,'  still,  the  substructure 
of  earthly  science  and  philosophy  by  which  he 
had  climbed  thus  far,  instead  of  being  set  aside 
as  worthless,  was  found  to  be  in  its  general  form 
the  exact  material  setting  of  the  interior  spiritual 
principles  now  to  be  revealed  from  above.  That 
which  was  submissively  renounced  is  thus  re- 
stored tenfold,  and  in  a  glorified  reality.  The 
splendid  system  of  psychology  and  physiology, 
and  of  the  elementary  world,  is  now  found  to 
be  part  of  a  stupendous  series  of  sciences 
mutually  corresponding  and  dependent,  reaching 
even  to  the  now  revealed  true  knowledge  of 
the  soul,  of  the  spiritual  world,  of  heaven  and 
the  divine  nature  itself.  It  is  the  apotheosis 
of  the  human  philosophy  which  had  yielded 
its  self-life  upon  the  cross  of  the  world's  con- 
tempt. It  was  the  beatification  of  the  science 
which  had  sought  to  be  the  handmaid  of  the 
Lord,  and  which  had  uttered,  in  the  final  despair 
of  human  searching  for  the  real  knowledge,  '  be 
it  unto  me  according  to  Thy  Word  ! ' 

There  are  features  of  this  self-renunciation 
of  Swedenborg  in  the  transition  from  his 
philosophical  to  his  theological  labours  that 

35 


SWEDENBORG 

have  been  but  little  appreciated  by  those  who 
have  formed  a  hasty  estimate  of  his  personality 
and  his  work.  Of  these  the  following  may  be 
here  mentioned. 


a.   THE  CHANGE  OF  LITERARY  STYLE 

The  classic  elegance  of  his  Latin  style,  which 
has  elicited  in  his  philosophical  works  the  ad- 
miration of  critics,  and  which  in  the  mystic 
prose  poem,  De  Cultu  et  Amwe  Dei,  de  Ortu 
Primogeniti,  et  de  Paradiso,1  a  work  written  just 
at  the  transition  period,  reminds  one  of  Dante 
in  its  grave  simplicity  and  beauty  of  diction, 
now  gives  place  to  a  mode  of  statement 
absolutely  without  ornament,  following  closely 
the  English  construction,  as  if  with  a  view  to 
that  English  reading  public  which,  according 
to  his  own  prophecy,  was  to  be  the  central 
vehicle  of  the  distribution  of  his  teachings  to 
the  world. 

Thus,  by  way  of  comparison  in  style,  Dante 
begins  his  great  poem,  the  Divina  Comedia,  with 
these  words : 

1  Londini :  apud  Kegan  Paul,  Trench  et  soc.  (MDCCCLXX1II.) 
36 


THE    TRANSITION 

Nel  mezzo  del  cammin  di  nostra  vita 
Mi  ritrovai  per  una  selva  oscura 
Che  la  diritta  via  era  smarrita. 

In  the  midst  of  the  journey  of  this  life 
I  found  myself  in  a  dark  forest 
Where  the  straight  way  was  lost. 

Swedenborg  begins  thus  his  poem  entitled, 
Tfie  Worship  and  Love  of  God :  the  Birth  of  our 
Earth  and  of  Paradise  : 

Cum  solus  quondam  in  Luco  urbano  cogitationum 
turbas  discutiendi  gratio  obambularem  ac  viderem 
viduari  foliis  arbores : 

Walking  once  alone  in  a  pleasant  grove  and  observ- 
ing that  the  trees  were  shedding  their  foliage  ...  I 
reflected  ...  on  the  vicissitudes  of  things. 

Compare  this  with  the  bald  simplicity  and 
the  English  phrasing  of  the  following,  from 
the  theological  work  De  Ccelo  et  ^Inferno: 


De  Luce  in  Coelo 

Lux  Coeli  non  est  naturalis  sicut  mundi,  sed  est 
spiritualis ;  est  enim  a  Domino  ut  sole  et  sol  est 
Divinus  Amor.  Quod  procedit  a  Domino  ut  Sole 
in  Coelis  vocatur  Divinum  Verum  est  tamen  in 
essentia  sua  Divinum  Bonum  unitum  Divino  Vero  : 
inde  Angelis  Lux  et  Calor ;  Ex  Divino  Vero  eat 
angelis  Lux  :  et  ex  Divino  Bono  est  illis  Calor. 

37 


SWEDENBORG 

b.   THE  SEER 

For  nineteen  years  since  the  beginning  of 
those  writings  which  claim  to  have  been  pro- 
duced under  supernatural  illumination,  the 
works  appear  anonymously,  and  for  a  long 
time  their  authorship  is  an  entire  secret.  In 
1768  the  work  on  Gonjicgicd  Love  bears  the  title 
Ab  Emanele  Swedenborgio,  Sueco  ;  and  on  the 
title-page  of  the  great  final  summary  Vera 
Christiana  Religio,  continent  Universam  Thcolo- 
giam  Novce  Ecclesice,  published  in  1771,  appears 
the  author's  name  with  the  words  added :  Domini 
Jesu  Christi  Servo,  revealing  the  character  in 
which  he  would  henceforth  be  known  in  rela- 
tion to  these  writings,  namely,  as  a  messenger 
of  divine  truths  rather  than  as  a  leader  in 
speculation.  Still  another  remarkable  phase  of 
this  laying  down  of  a  prior  life  of  earthly 
learning,  and  the  taking  up  of  a  life  and 
learning  given  from  above,  was  the  entire  ab- 
sence therein  of  either  the  ascetic  self-morti- 
fication or  of  the  ecstatic  trance  which  we 
associate  in  our  minds  with  the  oriental  and 
mediaeval  '  illuminati.'  Nothing  of  this  kind 
existed  in  Swedenborg's  case.  The  life  resumed 
was  not  only  a  healthy  and  vigorous  one,  with 

38 


THE    TRANSITION 

nothing  suggestive  of  the  visionary  or  fanatic, 
but  in  this  stage  of  his  literary  activity  appear 
the  same  logical  order  and  clearness  of  reason- 
ing, the  same  vastness  and  comprehensiveness 
of  method,  the  same  firm  grasp  of  particulars 
under  universal  unities,  which  elicit  our  wonder 
in  the  philosophical  works. 

The  splendid  intellectual  instrument  polished 
for  use  by  the  discipline  of  the  earlier  period 
now  seemed  to  have  found  its  true  and  worthy 
field  of  application.  In  a  subject-matter  wholly 
new,  the  art  and  the  skill  are  the  same  as  before. 
The  change  of  plane  from  material  to  spiritual 
realities  produces  no  flaw,  no  yielding  in  the 
logic.  The  flippant  assumption  of  lunacy  and 
madness  at  this  period  of  his  writing  is  con- 
fronted with  the  majestic  presence  of  a  system 
of  theology  and  of  spiritual  philosophy  so 
perfect  in  its  rational  consistency,  not  only 
with  itself,  but  with  the  other  realms  of  know- 
ledge, that  for  this  very  cause  some  have  been 
led  to  call  it  '  too  logical  a  system  to  be  re- 
vealed.' Utterly  as  the  human  philosopher 
had  subjected  his  rational  faculties  to  the  em- 
ployment of  the  divine  Master  in  communi- 
cating to  men  through  his  understanding 
the  '"Wisdom  of  Angels,'  it  was  not  by  the 

39 


SWEDENBOKGl 

sacrifice  of  reason  but  by  its  illumination  and 
inspiration  from  the  Author  of  reason  itself 
that  this  new  light  was  given.  The  man 
who  was  '  daily  in  intercourse  with  angels,' 
who  was  writing  the  'Heavenly  Secrets'  of 
the  Holy  Scripture,  and  Claimed  to  be  wit- 
nessing the  awful  scenes  of  a  '  Last  Judgment ' 
in  the  World  of  Spirits  preparatory  to  the 
introduction  of  a  new  age  of  the  world,  so  far 
from  being  a  dazed  and  dreamy  mystic  or  a 
recluse  from  society,  as  so  many  have  ignorantly 
assumed,  was  in  the  very  years  of  such  em- 
ployment the  warm  personal  and  political  friend 
of  the  then  Prime  Minister  of  Sweden,  Count 
Andrew  von  Hopken,  and  was  taking  a  very 
active  part  in  the  deliberations  of  the  Swedish 
Diet. 

Thus  in  the  year  1760,  in  which  he  writes 
his  treatise  on  the  '  Last  Judgment,'  and  {  On 
the  Spiritual  World,'  the  year  in  which  it 
became  first  publicly  known  that  he  was  the 
author  of  Arcana  Ccelestia,  he  presents  to  the 
Diet  the  following  papers :  { Memorial  in  favour 
of  a  return  to  the  Pure  Metallic  Currency'; 
'  Additional  Considerations  with  respect  to  the 
Course  of  Exchange ' ;  '  Memorial  to  the  King 
against  the  Exportation  of  Copper  ' ;  '  Memorial 

40 


THE    TRANSITION 

declining  to  become  a  member  of  the  Private 
Commission  on  Exchange.' 

In  1761,  the  year  of  Swedenborg's  memor- 
able announcement  of  the  '  Queen's  Secret,' 
and  of  the  discovery  of  the  '  lost  receipt '  for 
Mme.  de  Marteville — events  which  so  aroused 
the  wonder  of  Kant  when  verified  by  him  be- 
yond the  possibility  of  doubt  (see  Kant's  letter 
to  Fraulein  von  Knobloch),  Swedenborg  pre- 
sents to  the  Diet  a '  Memorial  on  the  Maintenance 
of  the  Country  and  the  Preservation  of  its 
Freedom,'  and  conducts  a  political  contest  with 
Councillor  Nordencrantz  in  defence  of  the 
Swedish  Government.1 

Such  is  the  normal  character  of  a  man  living 
in  two  worlds  and  performing  conscientiously 
his  functions  in  both. 

His  self-renunciation  was  not  that  of  the 
monk  or  quietist :  it  was  simply  that  of  a  man 
whose  understanding,  trained  in  all  the  learning 


1  Count  Hb'pken,  the  Prime  Minister  of  Sweden,  who  had 
known  Swedenborg  intimately  during  the  long  period  of  the 
twenty-seven  years  of  his  professed  continuous  experience  of 
open  intercourse  with  the  spiritual  world,  testifies  that  in  the 
year  1761,  which  was  in  the  midst  of  Swedenborg's  other-world 
experiences,  the  ablest  papers  submitted  to  the  Diet  of  Sweden 
on  matters  of  national  finance  were  those  of  Swedenborg,  sitting 
as  a  member  of  the  House  of  Nobles. 

41 


SWEDENBORd 

of  earth,  was  willing  to  be  employed  in  con- 
veying a  supernatural  knowledge  rather  than  in 
presenting  speculations  of  his  own  on  things 
that  transcend  the  human  senses.  The  crucial 
test  of  the  kind  of  intellectual  self-renunciation 
which  Swedenborg  attained  -is  one  which  few 
of  his  contemporaries  in  the  ranks  of  speculative 
philosophy,  and  few  of  those  who  would  fain  be 
his  followers  and  admirers  on  the  natural  plane, 
have  been  able  to  sustain.  Kant  was  sufficiently 
attracted  by  his  claim  of  a  specially  illumined 
reason  to  feel  that  he  must  remain  either  to 
worship  or  to  scoff.  He  chose  the  latter ;  but  in 
doing  so  he  had  to  divest  the  object  of  his  mirth 
of  the  garments  of  the  seer  and  clothe  him  in 
the  mask  of  the  harlequin — a  mask  which  the 
sober  reason  of  subsequent  time  has  been  less 
and  less  willing  to  accept.  In  representing 
Swedenborg  as  the  arch  medium  of  the  spiritists 
and  writing  under  his  name  a  treatise  of 
Spiritism,1  Kant  chooses  to  fight  a  man  of  straw, 
rather  than  to  assail  principles  of  truth  which, 
as  he  is  driven  elsewhere  to  acknowledge,  '  bear 
a  striking  resemblance  to  his  own.'  The  true 
relation  of  Swedenborg  to  the  Spiritism  whether 
of  Kant  or  of  the  present  time  can  best  be  seen 

1  Kant's  Traume  eines  Geittersehers.     Reclam.  Leipsic. 
42 


THE    TRANSITION 

by    the    following    statements    from    his    own 
writings. 

C.     SWEDENBORQ    NOT    A    MEDIUM 

'  It  is  believed  by  many  that  they  may  be 
taught  by  the  Lord  by  spirits  speaking  with 
them ;  but  they  do  not  know  that  this  is  fraught 
with  danger  to  their  souls.  As  soon  as  spirits 
begin  to  speak  with  man,  they  come  out  of 
their  spiritual  state  into  the  natural  state  of 
man,  they  join  themselves  with  the  thoughts 
of  his  affection,  and  from  these  they  speak  with 
him.  The  Pythonists  of  old  were  such,  and 
also  the  Magi  in  Egypt  and  Babylon.  Thus  the 
worship  of  God  was  turned  into  the  worship 
of  demons,  and  the  church  perished.  Therefore 
such  intercourse  was  forbidden  the  children 
of  Israel  under  penalty  of  death '  (Apocalypse 
Explained,  1182). 

While  Swedenborg  claims  to  have  had  intro- 
mission into  the  spiritual  world — an  experience 
not  to  be  confounded  with  the  admission  of 
spirits  from  that  world  into  this — yet  he  disclaims 
entirely  any  office  of  mediumship  whereby 
spirits  spoke  or  acted  through  him,  in  communi- 
cating truth  from  the  other  world. 

'  I  have  had  discourse  with  spirits  and  angels 
43 


SWEDENBORa 

now  for  several  years,  and  no  spirit  has  dared, 
nor  has  any  angel  desired,  to  tell  me  anything, 
much  less  to  instruct  me  in  regard  to  anything 
of  the  "Word,  or  of  doctrine  from  the  "Word; 
but  the  Lord  alone  has  taught  me'  (Divine 
Providence,  135). 

'From  the  first  day  I  have  never  received 
anything  of  the  doctrines  from  any  angel,  but 
from  the  Lord  alone  while  I  was  reading  the 
Word'  (True  Christian  Religion,  779). 

'  At  this  day,  revelation  is  only  made  by 
means  of  the  Word'  (Arcana  Ccelestia,  10355). 

Emerson,  in  a  later  day,  enchanted  the  newly 
awakened  Puritan  mind  with  beautiful  glimpses 
of  spiritual  verities  and  universal  ideas  directly 
traceable  to  the  influence  of  Swedenborg  whom 
as  a  natural  philosopher  he  cannot  too  highly 
extol;  but  the  delights  of  intellectual  creation 
were  too  dear  to  Emerson  to  allow  him  to 
accept  the  dictates  of  a  direct  revelation,  and 
his  only  resource  is  to  treat  lightly  the  spiritual 
receptivity  in  another  mind  of  which  his  own 
nature  was  incapable.  '  Sandy  deserts  '  he  calls 
now  those  honest  and  prosaic  narrations  and 
definitions  of  spiritual  phenomena  which  the 
seer,  for  whom  rhetoric  has  lost  all  value,  deals 
out  with  tiresome  repetition ;  forgetting  that  he 

44 


THE    TRANSITION 

has  unconsciously  absorbed  from  this  homely 
and  despised  source  the  spiritual  content  of  his 
own  ideality  and  ethics.  It  is  this,  clothed  with 
his  own  oracular  brilliancy,  that  Emerson  has 
handed  down  as  the  chief  heritage  of  what  is 
known  as  the  New  England  Transcendentalism. 
Its  message,  above  all,  is  that  of  man's  im- 
mediate environment  in  a  world  whose  sub- 
stance is  superior  to  matter,  but  related  to  it 
as  a  man's  soul  to  his  body.  To  take  from 
Emerson  Swedenborg's  doctrine  of  Correspon- 
dence would  leave  much  of  his  writing  dull  and 
dark.1 

It  was  during  the  years  of  transition  (1743- 
45)  that  Swedenborg  wrote  two  works  which 
reveal  unmistakably  the  trend  his  mind  was 
following,  as  anticipating  a  goal  ahead  whose 
real  significance  he  could  not  yet  comprehend. 
One  of  these  is  the  Adversaria,  a  book  of  notes 
upon  the  Old  Testament  for  his  own  use,  in 
compiling  which,  and  by  a  study  of  the  original 
texts,  he  acquired  a  minute  knowledge  of  the 
letter  of  the  Scriptures,  with  some  glimpses  of 

1  See  Article,  '  Swedenborg,'  by  Francis  Hedge,  Christian  Ex- 
aminer, November  1833  ;  Article  in  New  Jerusalem  Magazine, 
Boston,  November  1893 ;  Emerson's  '  Essay  on  Poetry  and  Im- 
agination '  in  Letters  and  Social  Aims. 

45 


SWEDENBOBG 

an  historical-allegorical  sense  to  form  a  kind  of 
basis  of  his  later  strictly  spiritual  interpretation. 
The  other  transitional  work  was  The  Worship 
and  Love  of  God,  treating  of  the  Birth  of  the 
Earth,  Paradise  and  the  Abode  of  Living 
Creatures ;  also  of  the  Nativity,  Infancy  and 
Love  of  the  First-begotten,  or  Adam  (De 
Cultu  d  Amoi^e  Dei,  etc.).  The  style  of  the  work 
is  that  of  a  prose  poem.  It  might  be  called 
a  drama  of  Creation,  in  which  figure  the 
various  orders  of  the  intelligences  and  loves  of 
the  human  soul  moving  upon  a  background  of 
the  world's  elemental  activity  in  evolving  a 
cosmos.  As  a  theory  of  evolution,  in  its  splendid 
audacity  it  puts  the  more  modern  theories 
which  pass  by  that  name  quite  into  insignifi- 
cance. The  language  is  graceful  and  elegant, 
suggesting  reminiscences  of  the  author's  early 
studies  of  the  Metamorphoses  of  Ovid.  There 
is  110  claim  in  it  of  supernatural  knowledge, 
the  purpose  being  avowedly  to  study  the 
Biblical  narrative  of  Creation  in  the  light  of 
a  scientific  cosmogony  and  psychology  and 
purely  '  according  to  the  thread  of  reason.' l 

1  For  a  full  account  of  this  remarkable  work  and  an  attempt 
at  its  interpretation  see  the  Essay,  '  A  Drama  of  Creation '  in 
The  Neio  Metaphysics,. by  Frank  Sewall.  London:  J..  Spiers. 
1887. 

46 


THE    TRANSITION 

A  description  of  the  formation  of  our  planet 
out  of  the  sun  in  the  bursting  forth  of  worlds 
out  of  its  womb  and  their  projection  into  the 
whirling  spheres,  is  followed  by  that  of  its  finding 
its  true  orbit  and  the  fixing  of  temperatures 
and  of  seasons  and  the  successive  production 
of  vegetable  and  animal  life,  and,  at  last,  of 
the  human  creature;  each  of  these  orders 
being  truly  evolved  from  the  one  below,  but 
immediately  and  successively,  the  transition 
being  not  from  the  highest  vegetable  to  the 
lowest  animal,  but  from  the  highest  vegetable 
to  the  highest  animal ;  so  that  man  is  born 
from  the  fruit  of  the  tree  in  which  all  the  finest 
essences  of  nature  are  centred  and  combined 
and  which  grows  in  the  midst  of  the  earthly 
Paradise.  Nowhere  else  does  the  author  speak 
of  this_theory  of  the  origin  of  man.  It  seems 
as  if  it  were  the  poetic  copestone  to  the 
system  of  combined  physics  and  metaphysics 
which  had  occupied  his  mind  for  so  many  years, 
but  one  which  was,  by  an  abrupt  lifting  of  the 
curtain,  to  give  place  to  a  vision  no  longer  of 
the  phenomenal  and  theoretical  but  the  real, 
the  immortal  and  the  eternal — the  true  know- 
ledge of  the  spirit  and  of  the  spiritual  world. 


47 


SWEDENBOEG 


d.   THE  SPIRITUAL  DIARY 

In  this  Spiritual  Diary,  an  immense  body  of 
memoranda  written  during  the  years  1747-52, 
Swedenborg  describes  with  prosaic  exactness 
the  new  world  opened  to  his  vision,  the  places 
visited,  the  characters  met,  the  conversations 
held  in  the  spiritual  world. 

The  most  startling  and  wonderful  scenes  are 
here  related,  in  the  matter-of-fact  manner  of 
e very-day  occurrences.  The  entries  in  this 
purely  private  record,  published  from  the  Latin 
MSS.  in  1844,  number  over  5,500,  and  they 
constitute,  with  their  careful  analysis  of 
characters  and  situations,  a  storehouse  of 
spiritual  data  of  an  entirely  unique  value. 

The  following  extract  will  serve  as  a  sample 
of  these  entries,  and  will  at  the  same  time 
throw  light  upon  the  problems  of  modern 
hypnotism,  spiritism,  telepathy,  and  like  ex- 
periences. 

Self-Delusion  of  Spirits. — '  It  has  been  shown 
to  me  many  times  that  spirits  who  spoke  with 
me  imagined  that  they  were  the  men  I  was 
thinking  of;  nor  did  other  spirits  know  other- 
wise. For  instance,  yesterday  and  to-day,  one 

48 


THE    TRANSITION 

of  them  was  so  much  like  a  person  known  to 
me  in  life,  in  everything  (so  far  as  I  knew) 
pertaining  to  him,  that  nothing  could  be  more 
like.  Wherefore,  let  those  who  speak  with 
spirits  beware  when  spirits  say  that  they  are 
persons  who  are  known  to  them,  and  that  they 
are  the  dead. 

'For  there  are  classes  of  spirits  of  a  similar 
nature.  When  accordant  things  are  called 
forth  in  the  memory  of  a  man  and  are  thus 
represented  to  them,  they  suppose  that  they 
are  the  identical  person  about  whom  he  is 
thinking  :  then,  all  the  things  representing  the 
person  thought  of  are  called  forth  from  the 
memory,  even  the  words,  speech,  tones  of  voice, 
gestures,  and  many  other  things '  (Aug.  18, 
1748). 

Concerning  the  Lord's  Prayw. — 'When  the 
Lord's  Prayer,  which  comprehends  all  celestial 
and  spiritual  things,  is  read,  there  may  be 
infused  into  each  particular  so  many  things 
that  heaven  itself  shall  not  be  capable  of  com- 
prehending them,  and  that,  too,  according  to 
the  capacity  and  use  of  every  one.  The  more 
internally  and  intimately  any  one  penetrates, 
the  more  fully  or  abundantly  the  things  of 
heaven  are  understood  ;  by  those  in  lower  states 
E  49 


SWEDENBORG 

they  are  not  comprehended  but  are  a  kind  of 
arcana  to  them,  some  being  ineffable.  Celestial 
ideas  which  all  emanate  from  the  Lord,  the 
lower  they  descend,  or  the  lower  the  character 
of  the  men  to  whom  they  come,  the  more  com- 
plete appears  the  closing  up  of  the  mind,  till 
at  length  a  certain  hardness  ensues  in  which 
there  is  little  or  nothing  besides  the  sense  of 
the  letter  or  the  ideas  conveyed  by  the  words  ; 
whence  it  was  given  to  know,  from  the  Lord's 
Prayer,  what  kind  of  souls  they  had  been  in 
the  life  of  the  body  as  to  the  doctrine  of  their 
faith,  inasmuch  as  it  was  granted  to  them  to 
have  their  former  sense  of  these  things  when 
offering  prayer  (April  1,  1748).  Thus  it  is  that 
the  idea  expands  upwards  or  inwards  from 
corporeal  things,  and  indeed  to  indefinite  extent 
in  every  degree,  or,  in  other  words,  through 
indefinitely  multiplied  expansions  in  the  in- 
teriors of  the  mind,  and  so  in  the  more  interior 
parts,  and  in  the  inmosts.' 

At  length  with  the  first  volume  of  the  Arcana 
Ccelestia,  written  in  the  full  and  certain  light 
of  the  new  revelation,  Swedenborg  begins  those 
remarkable  treatises  in  which  he  publicly 
claims  to  set  forth,  for  the  enlightenment  of  the 
whole  Christian  world,  the  truths  of  a  super- 

50 


THE    TRANSITION 

natural  and  divine  origin  by  the  divine  mercy 
revealed  to  him. 

The  Arcana  itself  is  a  work  in  Latin  in 
twelve  volumes,  and  consists  of  an  exposition 
of  the  internal  and  spiritual  sense  of  the  books 
of  Genesis  and  Exodus. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE    THEOLOGICAL    WRITINGS 
1749—1772 

INTERSPERSED  between  the  chapters  of  the 
Arcana  are  treatises  on  various  phenomena  of 
the  spiritual  world  and  statements  of 'heavenly 
doctrine.'  The  publication  of  this  stupendous 
work,  begun  in  London  in  1749,  covered  a 
period  of  seven  years.  The  handsome  quarto 
volumes,  as  they  appeared  anonymously  from 
time  to  time,  were  mainly  distributed  in  gifts  to 
the  bishops  and  to  the  leading  universities  of 
England  and  the  Continent.  Whatever  funds 
accrued  from  their  sale  were  devoted  to  the 
British  Society  for  the  Propagation  of  the 
Gospel.  After  this  initial  work  appear  in  suc- 
cession at  short  intervals,  for  a  period  of  fifteen 
years,  the  following  treatises  : 

In  1768 :  Heaven  and  Hell ;  also  the  Inter- 
mediate  World,  or  World  of  Spirits.  A  Relation 
of  Things  Heard  and  Seen. 

The  Last   Judgment    and    the   Destruction    of 
52 


THE    THEOLOGICAL    WRITINGS 

Babylon:  showing  that  all  the  Predictions  in 
the  Revelation  are  at  this  day  fulfilled  :  being 
a  Revelation  of  Things  Heard  and  Seen. 

On  The  White  Horse  mentioned  in  the  Revela- 
tion, ch.  xix.,  with  particulars  respecting  the 
Word  and  its  Spiritual  Sense  ;  extracted  from 
the  Arcana  Ccelestia. 

On  The  Earths  in  our  Solar  System  and  the 
Earths  in  the  Starry  Heavens,  with  an  account 
of  their  Inhabitants  and  also  of  the  Spirits  and 
Angels  there. 

On  The  New  Jerusalem  and  its  Heavenly 
Doctrines  according  to  what  has  been  heard 
from  Heaven  ;  to  which  is  prefixed  information 
regarding  the  New  Heaven  and  the  New 
Earth. 

In  1763  appear  Angelic  Wisdom  (Sapientia 
Angelica*),  concerning  the  Divine  Love  and 
Wisdom,  and  the  Four  Leading  Doctrines  of  the 
New  Church  signified  by  the  New  Jerusalem  in  the 
Revelation',  being  those  respecting  the  Lord, 
the  Sacred  Scripture,  Faith  and  Life. 

In  1764:  Angelic  Wisdom  concerning  the  Divine 
Providence. 

In  1766:  The  Apocalypse  Revealed,  in  which 
are  disclosed  the  Arcana  therein  foretold. 

In  1768 :  Conjugial  Love  and  its  Chaste  De- 
53 


SWEDENBORG 

lights ;    also    Adulterous    Love    and    its    Insane 
Pleasures. 

In  1769 :  A  Brief  Exposition  of  the  Doctrine  of 
the  New  Church  signified  by  the  New  Jerusalem  in 
the  Revelation.  Also  tlie  Intercourse  between  the 
Soul  and  the  Body. 

Finally  in  1771  appears  the  great  summary 
of  his  system,  The  True  Christian  Religion;  con- 
taining the  Universal  Theology  of  the  New  Church, 
foretold  in  Daniel  vii.  13,  14,  and  in  the  Apoca- 
lypse xxi.  1,  2.  In  this  work  we  have  a  com- 
plete body  of  theology  systematically  presented, 
proceeding  from  a  profound  discussion  of 
Absolute  Being  to  the  doctrine  of  the  Lord  the 
Redeemer,  the  Holy  Spirit  and  the  Divine 
Trinity ;  the  Sacred  Scripture  ;  the  Catechism, 
or  Decalogue,  explained  as  to  its  External  and 
Internal  Sense ;  Faith,  Charity,  Free  Deter- 
mination ;  Repentance,  Reformation  and  Re- 
generation ;  Imputation,  Baptism,  the  Holy 
Supper ;  the  Consummation  of  the  Age,  the 
Coming  of  the  Lord  and  the  New  Heaven  and 
the  New  Church. 

The  chapters  of  this  work,  like  those  of  the 
Arcana,  are  interspersed  with  Memorabilia,  or 
accounts  of  the  author's  personal  observations 
and  conversations  in  the  spiritual  world,  em- 

54 


THE    THEOLOGICAL    WRITINGS 

bracing  visions  in  the  heavens  and  in  the  hells, 
remarkable  pictures  of  a  Dantesque  simplicity 
and  strength  without  the  least  indication  of 
poetic  fancy  or  rhetorical  effort.  They  are 
relations  of  '  things  heard  and  seen '  by  a 
traveller  returned  from  a  hitherto  unknown 
land.  Bizarre  and  uncouth  as  many  of  the 
scenes  depicted  are,  being  all  of  them  phenomena 
appearing  according  to  the  universal  law  of 
spontaneous  symbolic  representation  which  pre- 
vails in  that  world,  they  have  their  nearest 
parallels  in  the  prophetic  visions  contained  in 
the  Holy  Scriptures,  and  when  carefully  analysed 
are  found  to  be  only  the  rational  embodiments, 
or  Darstdlung,  of  spiritual  states  and  relations 
actually  existing.  In  these  narratives  figure 
spirits  who  had  been  inhabitants  of  other  planets. 
Scenes  are  portrayed  as  occurring  in  the  Last 
Judgment,  the  great  Aufkldrung  in  the  world 
of  spirits  where  were  taking  place  those  moral 
changes  from  an  old  to  a  new  age,  which,  from 
the  beginning  of  the  French  Revolution  until 
now,  have  been  taking  form  on  earth  in  the 
transformation  of  all  things  political,  economical 
and  religious. 

All   these   narrations    will    bear    the   closest 
rational  scrutiny  as  to  their  credibility,  provided 

55 


SWEDENBORG 

the  single  premise  be  granted  that  the  other 
world  exists.  So  consistent,  so  realistic  indeed 
are  they  that  the  reader  is  compelled  to  admit  that 
these  very  experiences,  instead  of  being  extra- 
ordinary and  fanciful,  are  the  things  most 
natural  and  likely  to  occur  provided  there  be  a 
sphere  of  spiritual  causes  behind  the  shifting 
scenes  of  the  drama  of  our  life  here. 

A  Memorable  Relation. — '  Awaking  one  morning 
from  sleep,  I  saw  two  angels  descending  from 
heaven,  one  from  the  southern  quarter  and  the 
other  from  the  eastern,  each  in  his  chariot 
drawn  by  white  horses.  The  chariot  of  the 
angel  from  the  southern  quarter  shone  like 
silver,  and  that  of  the  angel  of  the  eastern 
quarter  like  gold,  and  the  reins  which  they 
held  in  their  hands  glowed  with  a  flaming  light 
like  the  dawn  of  day.  These  two  angels  appeared 
thus  to  me  when  at  a  distance,  but  when  they 
came  near  they  did  not  appear  in  chariots,  but 
in  their  own  angelic  human  form.  The  one 
from  the  eastern  quarter  of  heaven  was  clad 
in  bright  purple  raiment,  and  the  one  from  the 
southern  quarter  in  raiment  of  a  violet  blue. 
As  soon  as  they  reached  the  inferior  regions 
below  the  heavens  they  ran  to  meet  each  other, 
ts  if  they  strove  which  should  be  first,  and 

56 


THE   THEOLOGICAL    WRITINGS 

mutually  embraced  and  kissed  each  other.  I 
was  informed  that  these  two  angels,  during 
their  abode  on  earth,  had  been  conjoined  in  the 
bond  of  an  interior  friendship,  but  that  now  one 
was  in  the  eastern  heaven  and  the  other  in  the 
southern :  in  the  eastern  heaven  are  those  who 
are  in  love  from  the  Lord,  and  in  the  southern 
heaven  those  who  are  in  wisdom  from  the  Lord. 
"When  they  had  conversed  together  some  time 
about  the  magnificent  objects  and  scenery  in 
their  respective  heavens,  they  entered  upon  the 
discussion  of  this  question:  whether  heaven,  in 
its  essence,  be  love  or  wisdom.  In  this  they 
agreed  that  the  one  derived  its  origin  from  the 
other ;  but  the  debate  was  which  was  the  primi- 
tive and  which  the  derivative.  The  angel  from 
the  southern  heaven  then  asked  the  other, 
"  What  is  love  ?  "  to  which  he  replied,  "  Love 
originating  from  the  Lord  as  a  sun  is  the  vital 
heat  of  angels  and  men,  consequently  the  ease 
of  their  life ;  and  the  derivations  of  love  are 
called  affections,  and  by  them  are  produced 
perceptions,  and  thus  thoughts,  whence  it 
follows  that  wisdom  in  its  origin  is  love,  con- 
sequently that  thought,  in  its  origin,  is  the 
affection  of  that  love  ;  and  it  is  evident,  from 
the  derivations  examined  in  their  order,  that 

57 


SWEDENBORG 

thought  is  only  the  form  of  affection.  The 
reason  why  this  is  not  known  is,  because 
thoughts  are  in  light  and  affections  in  heat, 
so  that  the  mind  reflects  upon  its  thoughts, 
but  not  on  its  affections.  That  thought  is 
only  the  form  of  the  affection  of  some  par- 
ticular love  may  also  be  illustrated  by  the  case 
of  speech,  which  is  only  the  form  of  sound; 
which  is  a  just  illustration,  because  sound 
corresponds  with  affection,  and  speech  with 
thought;  therefore  affection  forms  the  sound 
or  tone  of  the  voice,  and  thought  the  speech 
or  words  of  a  discourse.  This  may  be  further 
elucidated  by  this  consideration,  that  if  you 
take  away  sound  from  speech,  nothing  of 
speech  remains ;  and  in  like  manner  if  you 
take  away  affection  from  thought,  nothing  of 
thought  remains.  Hence,  then,  it  is  plain  that 
love  is  the  all  of  wisdom ;  consequently  the 
essence  of  the  heavens  is  love  and  their  exist- 
ence is  wisdom;  or,  what  is  the  same  thing, 
the  heavens  have  their  being  from  the  divine 
love  and  exist  from  the  divine  love  by  the 
divine  wisdom  ;  therefore,  as  was  said  above, 
the  one  derives  its  origin  from  the  other. ' 
....  The  angels  conversed  on  these  subjects 
spiritually,  and  spiritual  discourse  contains  and 

58 


THE    THEOLOGICAL    WRITINGS 

infolds  in  it  thousands  of  things  which  natural 
language  cannot  express,  and,  what  is  won- 
derful, such  as  do  not  so  much  as  fall  within 
the  ideas  of  natural  thought.  After  conversing 
together  for  some  time  on  these  and  similar 
subjects  the  angels  departed,  and,  as  they  re- 
tired to  their  respective  heavens,  their  heads 
appeared  encompassed  with  stars,  and  when 
they  were  removed  to  a  distance  from  me,  they 
again  appeared  in  chariots  as  before.' 

CLASSIFICATION  OF  THE  THEOLOGICAL  WORKS 

The  treatises  on  Theology,  like  those  on 
Philosophy,  may  be  classified  in  three  divisions  : 
the  Analytic,  the  Synthetic  and  the  Doctrinal. 

The  first,  the  Analytic,  embraces  the  record 
of  things  heard  and  seen  in  the  spiritual  world, 
and  the  particulars  of  truth  revealed  in  the 
internal  sense  of  the  Scriptures.  Here  belong 
the  Arcana,  The 'Apocalypse  Revealed,  Heaven  arid 
Hell,  The  Last  Judgment,  The  Earths  in  the 
Universe,  and  The  Memorabilia  interspersed 
through  all  the  works. 

The  Synthetic  class  embraces  those  which  con- 
tain the  laws  governing  all  spiritual  phenomena 
and  Divine  operations,  and  the  relation  of  matter 
to  spirit,  or  of  the  two  worlds.  These  are  the 

59 


SWEDENBORG 

Angdic  Wisdom  concerning  the  Divine  Love  and 
Wisdom,  and  Concerning  the  Divine  Providence, 
and  the  work  on  Influx. 

The  Doctrinal  class,  in  which,  from  all  these 
particulars  and  summaries,  a  complete  system 
of  theology  and  ethics  is  evolved,  forming  the 
final  and  perfected  form  of  Christianity,  that 
of  a  New  Universal  Church.  Here  are  to  be 
named  The  True  Christian  Religion,  The  Four 
Leading  Doctrines,  and  The  New  Jerusalem  and 
its  Heavenly  Doctrines. 

For  a  discussion  of  the  loftiest  and  most 
sacred  relation  of  human  life,  that  upon  which 
the  whole  social  economy  must  rest  or  go 
asunder — the  marriage  relation — the  reader  will 
resort  to  the  work  on  Conjugial  Love  and  its 
Chaste  Delights,  in  which  the  complementary 
relation  of  the  sexes  is  shown  to  be  mental 
as  well  as  physical,  and  hence  having  a 
significance  beyond  the  earthly  life. 

The  twofold  nature  of  the  human  mind  in 
will  and  intellect,  patterned  as  '  the  image  of 
God,'  after  the  union  of  love  and  wisdom  in 
the  divine  nature,  finds  its  ultimate  expression 
in  both  the  mental  and  physical  differences  of 
the  two  sexes.  Their  union  in  marriage  con- 
stitutes the  complete  man ;  and  from  its  origin 

60 


in  the  Divine  Itself  the  marriage  union  is  essen- 
tially chaste  and  holy.  Swedenborg  calls  it 
4  the  precious  jewel  of  human  life  and  the  re- 
pository of  the  Christian  religion.'  Every 
violation  and  perversion  of  this  relation  of 
the  sexes  he  designates  as  evil,  and  as  such 
forbidden  in  the  Decalogue.  Especially  and 
definitely  does  he  make  this  assertion  in  the 
work  entitled  '  The  Doctrine  of  Life  for  the 
New  Jerusalem'  in  treating  of  the  Command- 
ment regarding  adultery  (Nos.  74-9) ;  while  in 
an  Appendix  to  Conjugial  Love  on  Scortatory 
Love  and  its  Iiwaiie  Pleasures,  the  reverse  of  the 
heavenly  order  is  shown,  together  with  the  pro- 
visions by  which,  in  the  disordered  moral  condi- 
tions of  society,  sexual  evils  may  be  mitigated 
and  some  capacity  for  true  marriage  preserved. 

Pervading  all  the  writings  of  this  period 
is  a  complete  system  of  Ethics  based  upon  the 
law  of  Use,  or  of  Mutual  Service,  which  law 
pervades  the  universe  throughout  from  its  very 
constitution  and  exhibits  that  ladder  by  which 
all  created  things  are  conjoined  to  God,  their 
Creator.  Social  economics  are  treated  in  the 
little  work  on  Charity.  This  is  defined,  not  as 
meaning  mere  benevolence  or  alms-giving,  but 
as  the  faithful  pursuance  by  every  man  of 

61 


SWEDENBOBG 

the  duties  of  his  own  office  in  society,  together 
with  the  shunning  of  all  evils  as  sins  against 
God.  In  this  doctrine  man  is  represented  as 
a  'form  of  charity,'  or  as  that  moral  and  free 
instrument  through  which  the  universal  love 
of  God  the  Creator  can  be  dispensed  among 
men  in  their  doing  of  useful  service  and  in  their 
happiness  realized  in  this  doing.  Neither  the 
good  nor  the  happiness  is  man's  own ;  but  it 
flows  down  from  God  into  those  channels  of 
useful,  neighbourly  living  which  a  truly  organized 
society  provides ;  and  man's  entire  share  in  the 
doing  and  the  blessing  consists  in  his  removing 
from  his  motives  and  his  acts  those  evils  of 
self-love  which  are  opposed  to  the  inflow  of  the 
divine  Altruism.  The  little  work  on  Charity 
discusses  the  relation  of  the  individual  to  the 
common  good,  and  what  conduct  constitutes 
charity  in  the  Ruler,  the  Magistrate,  the  Priest, 
the  Soldier,  the  Servant  and  other  offices.  On 
its  largest  scale  Swedeuborg's  system  of  social 
order  is  displayed  in  his  doctrine  of  the  Grand 
Man  (Maximus  Homo),  in  which  Society  as  a 
whole  or  the  Kingdom  of  God  is  represented 
as  forming  an  organic  unit  patterned  after  the 
human  form  and  so  in  the  image  of  God.  Thus 
it  reflects  the  perfections  of  the  Creator  who  is 

62 


THE    THEOLOGICAL    WRITINGS 

essential  love,  on  the  plane  of  the  infinite 
relations  and  uses  of  men  in  their  several 
capacities  for  loving  and  serving  the  neighbour. 
The  work  on  The  Earths  in  the  Univerxe  brings  in  an 
important  phase  of  this  doctrine,  showing  how  the 
inhabitants  of  the  several  planets  \)y  their  distinct 
moral  qualities,  go  to  make  up  the  completeness 
in  the  spiritual  world  of  the  great  Social  Man. 

THE  NEW  AGE 

The  distinctive  character  of  the  New  Age  is 
the  return  to  a  rational  unity  in  man's  concep- 
tion of  God,  of  the  Universe  and  of  Life  ;  in  the 
conception  of  God  as  the  unity  of  the  three 
essentials  of  personality  in  the  Divine  Humanity 
of  Jesus  Christ  glorified,  the  one  Lord  God  of 
Heaven  and  Earth ;  in  the  conception  of  the 
unity  of  the  Universe  through  the  influx  of 
One  life  in  the  three  degrees— God,  Spirit,  and 
Nature — which  are  one,  not  by  confusion,  but  by 
correspondence  ;  and  in  the  conception  of  the 
unity  of  Life  by  the  restored  unity  of  faith  in  God 
with  charity  to  the  neighbour.  Swedenborg,  on 
being  asked  to  explain  his  theology,  replied, 
'  There  are  two  principles  of  it — that  God  is 
One,  and  that  there  is  a  conjunction  of  Charity 
and  Faith.' 

63 


CHAPTER  VI 

PHILOSOPHY    AND    THE    SAPIENTIA   ANGELICA 

OF  the  twofold  series  of  Swedenborg's  writings, 
the  Scientific  and  the  Theological,  we  have  as 
a  unique  result  a  complete  Weltanschauung,  or 
World-system,  which  embraces  in  harmonious 
and  strictly  logical  accord  the  two  worlds  of 
human  experience,  the  natural  and  the  spiritual. 
Probably  no  such  a  complete  survey  of  the 
whole  realm  of  Being  in  a  scientific  form  has 
ever  been  presented  to  rational  contemplation. 
Not  to  mention  the  open  conflict  between  science 
and  revelation  which  from  time  immemorial  has 
been  looked  at  as  belonging  necessarily  to  the 
existing  order  of  things,  the  attempts  towards 
a  harmony  hitherto  essayed  have  reduced  them- 
selves without  exception  either  into  the  mystic's 
acceptance  of  the  transcendental  knowledge, 
together  with  his  abandonment  of  natural 
learning  as  illusory  and  worthless ;  or  into  the 
denial  of  any  real  knowledge  beyond  the  natural, 
and  the  consequent  regarding  of  ideas  of  God 

64 


PHILOSOPHY 

of  the  soul,  its  freedom  and  immortality  as  pious 
fictions  of  the  practical  reason,  the  necessary 
postulates  of  man's  ethical  nature,  but  merely 
human  in  their  origin,  and  subject  to  all  the 
limitations  of  the  human  mind.  For  the  first 
time  appears  a  man  who  claims  to  have  beheld 
with  twofold  vision  the  twofold  universe,  and 
whose  understanding,  in  its  unshaken  integrity 
and  steady  grasp,  has  taken  in  the  laws  and 
relations  of  both  spheres,  and,  ignoring  and 
despising  neither,  has  combined  the  laws  and 
phenomena  of  the  two  worlds  in  a  perfect 
system. 

This  is  Swedenborg's  unique  position  in  the 
history  of  human  thought.  He  has  presented 
to  the  world  a  system  of  Universal  Philosophy 
based  in  its  spiritual  as  well  as  its  natural 
contents  on  analytic  and  experimental  know- 
ledge. '  Being  asked,'  says  Swedenborg,  '  how 
from  a  philosopher  I  became  a  theologian,  I 
answered,  "In  the  same  manner  that  fishers 
were  made  disciples  and  apostles  by  the  Lord  "  ; 
and  that  I  also,  from  early  youth,  had  been  a 
spiritual  fisherman!  On  hearing  this,  the  in- 
quirer asked  what  a  spiritual  fisherman  was. 
I  replied  that  a  fisher,  in  the  spiritual  sense  of 
the  Word,  signifies  a  man  who  investigates  and 

F  65 


SWEDENBOEG 

teaches  natural  truths,  and  afterwards  spiritual 
truths,  in  a  rational  manner :  for  the  latter  are 
founded  upon  the  former  '  (Influx,  §  20). 

It  is  a  positive  transcendentalism  in  that  it 
is  a  knowledge  transcending  the  senses  of  the 
physical  body,  but  real  to  those  organs  of  the 
spiritual  body  which  in  every  man  become 
released  into  conscious  activity  at  death,  and 
in  extraordinary  instances  enjoy  this  activity 
even  in  this  world.  The  two  great  fields  of 
research  in  all  their  distinctiveness  claim  each 
its  period  of  exhaustive  development.  '  Philo- 
sophy' is  the  term  which  Swedenborg  applies 
to  the  kind  of  research  employed  in  the  first  of 
these  fields.  The  term  is  used  in  the  sense  of 
the  natural  philosophy  of  his  day,  as  the  survey 
of  nature,  whether  in  the  physical  or  psycho- 
logical fields,  as  a  grand  mechanism,  subject 
everywhere  to  the  laws  discoverable  in  geometry, 
physics  and  mechanics.  Only  he  adheres  to  that 
element  as  essential  which  he  calls  the  soul ;  and 
while  he  confesses  that  his  cosmogony  reduces 
itself  to  a  perfect  mechanism — so  absolute  and 
universal  is  the  sway  of  physical  law  in  nature 
— still  the  presence  of  this  supernatural  fact 
must  everywhere  be  conceded. 

'  I  have  no  objection,'  he  says,  '  to  my  system 
66 


PHILOSOPHY 

of  the  world  being  called  mechanism,  only  let 
it  be  an  animated  mechanism.'  This  pursuit 
of  the  soul  throughout  the  first  period  is  there- 
fore always  within  the  limits  of  a  time-and-space 
world.  He  sought  its  first  essence  in  the  fibre 
and  animal  spirit,  just  as  in  physics  he  sought 
his  initial  atom  in  the  point  and  the  first  finite. 
The  conception  of  God  throughout  the  philo- 
sophic period  is  that  of  the  Infinite  as  the 
requisite  source  of  initial  motion,  the  idea  of 
an  infinite  personality  and  of  a  divine  humanity 
being  as  yet  but  dimly  conceived. 

All  this  becomes  changed  in  the  second 
period.  The  philosophy  of  the  first  period  now 
gives  way  to  the  Sapientia  Angelica,  which  term 
we  must  take  to  mean,  not  the  particular  know- 
ledge of  a  superior  kind  which  the  angels 
possess  and  can  impart  to  each  other  and  to 
men,  but  the  kind  of  knowledge  of  which  the 
human  soul  becomes  capable  when  translated 
into  a  world  above  time  and  space  and  where 
the  very  elements  are  spiritual,  the  sun  of  that 
world  being  itself  the  first  effulgence  of  the 
infinite  love  and  wisdom  of  God,  and,  conse- 
quently, the  very  atmospheres,  and  the  heat 
and  light  conveyed  in  them,  being  tremulous 
waves  of  substantial  good  and  truth.  The 

67 


SWEDENBORG 

Sapientia  Angelica,  hence,  is  a  knowledge  of 
spiritual  realities  or  of  those  truly  vital  sub- 
stances and  forces  which  go  to  furnish  the  great 
mechanism  of  nature  with  a  soul.  It  is  the 
actual  vision  and  touch  of  a  world  of  spiritual 
substance  which  the  purified  human  spirit  is 
capable  of  experiencing  after  rising  out  of  the 
world  of  symbolic  material  phenomena  by 
putting  off  the  material  body  with  its  senses. 
Rarely,  if  ever,  does  Swedenborg  employ  the 
term  '  philosophy '  in  reference  to  this  immediate 
angelic  experience,  which  he  calls  '  wisdom.' 
He  uses  this  term  intentionally  in  distinction 
from  knowledge  or  intelligence,  the  first  of 
these  being,  in  his  definition,  applied  to  the 
acquiring  of  information  through  the  senses 
and  their  environment ;  the  second,  to  the 
orderly  arrangement  of  these  acquired  know- 
ledges in  their  respective  groups  by  means  of 
the  rational  faculty ;  the  third,  the  wisdom 
itself,  being  the  truth  acquired  now  seen  and 
loved  truly,  in  its  own  nature  and  worth,  as  the 
form  of  good.  Wisdom,  therefore,  while  resting 
upon  knowledge  and  reason,  yet  is  a  distinct 
kind  of  immediate  perception  which  the  purified 
spirit  enjoys  after  death  in  the  degree  in  which, 
in  his  own  experience,  the  truth  has  become  the 

68 


PHILOSOPHY 

form  of  his  action  from  his  very  love  of  it  as 
the  form  of  good.  It  is  not  to  be  identified  with 
the  Gnostic's  or  the  theosophist's  immediate 
vision  of  the  truth  as  a  state  above  and  apart  from 
voluntary  and  intellectual  activity.  In  wisdom 
the  propriiim,  or  the  personality  of  the  angel,  is 
realized  in  its  most  intense  form.  If  it  were  not 
so  this  angelic  contemplation  of  reality  would 
fail  of  its  purpose  in  the  divine  scheme  of  the 
round  of  uses.  The  angelic  contemplation  of 
reality  comes  from  the  shining  of  a  real  heavenly 
light  in  the  mind. 

Can  there,  now,  be  any  comprehensive  philo- 
sophy of  Swedenborg,  strictly  speaking?  We 
answer  Yes,  for  the  two  reasons  that  there  are 
certain  fundamental  constructive  laws  that 
characterize  alike  both  systems,  the  natural  and 
the  spiritual,  and  that  accordingly  the  two  worlds 
and  their  respective  cosmogonies  are  brought 
visibly  into  their  relation  of  a  perfect  correspon- 
dence. The  harmony  of  the  two  systems  can 
only  be  attributed  to  their  being  constructed 
according  to  a  common  organon,  or  method. 

SWEDENBORG'S  NOVUM  OROAKUM 

This  truly  new  organum,  which  constitutes 
Swedenborg's  great  contribution  to  philosophy, 

69 


SWEDENBORG 

is  his  doctrine  of  Influx,   of  Discrete  Degrees 
and  their  Correspondence. 

The  world  is  vibration, — action,  and  reaction. 
The  Universe  is  the  theatre  of  altruistic  love. 
Force  originates  in  will,  and  the  primal  will 
is  the  Divine  Love.  Life  is  love  emanating  by 
wisdom  into  created  spheres,  and  there  operating 
in  uses.  These  spheres  are  not  a  continuous 
plane,  but  are  in  discrete  degrees,  and  related 
by  correspondence. 

These  discrete  degrees  are,  in  their  eternal 
divine  potential  nature,  Love,  Wisdom  and  Use  ; 
in  their  cosmological  functions,  End,  Cause  and 
Effect ;  in  theology,  God,  Spirit  and  the  Natural 
World ;  in  revelation  they  are  given  the  names 
of  a  holy  Trinity — Father,  Son  and  Holy  Spirit. 
In  ontological  terms  they  become  Substance, 
Form  and  Thing ;  in  philosophy,  the  Real,  the 
Ideal  and  the  Actual ;  in  psychology,  the  Will, 
the  Intellect  and  Action;  in  speech,  Affection, 
Thought  and  Utterance ;  in  the  building  of 
language,  the  Vowel,  the  Consonant  and  the 
Word ;  the  Verb,  the  Subject  and  the  Predicate. 
In  all  these  trines,  which  cover  with  sufficient 
completeness  the  whole  realm  of  being  and 
activity,  there  will  be  found  the  invariable 
presence  of  these  three  essentials,  which  are 

70 


PHILOSOPHY 

necessary  to  the  being  of  anything  that  exists 
or  can  be  conceived  of  as  existing  ;  namely,  the 
why,  or  the  purpose  for  which  it  exists,  which 
Swedenborg  calls  the  End ;  the  how,  or  the 
manner  and  law  by  which  it  exists,  called  by 
Swedenborg  Cause  (meaning  the  instrumental 
cause  or,  causa  efficiens,  in  distinction  from  the 
end  as  the  causa  finalis),  and  finally  the  resultant 
thing,  the  what,  or  that  which  Swedenborg  calls 
the  Effect.  These  three  are  discrete  because 
they  are,  by  the  very  nature  of  things,  intrans- 
mutable.  One  may  reside  within  and  actuate, 
the  other,  but  without  ever  becoming  that  other. 
Will  may  prompt  the  intellect,  and  put  on  a 
form  or  determination  in  the  intellect,  and  both 
these  may  become  actual  in  a  word  or  deed  of 
the  body.  But  will  is  not  intellect,  nor  is 
intellect  action.  They  are  for  ever  discrete  in 
their  nature,  however  one  may  operate  through 
another,  and  so  all  become  embodied  in  the 
ultimate  what,  or  thing.  These  fundamental 
distinctions,  existing  eternally  in  the  very  order 
of  the  world  when  strictly  observed,  forbid 
the  confusion  of  substance  between  spirit  and 
matter  and  between  God  and  nature,  and 
so  render  possible  a  conception  of  the  imman- 
ence of  God  in  nature  which  is  free  from 


SWEDENBORG 

Pantheism,  or  the  confusion  of  God  with 
nature. 

These  'discrete  degrees,'  thus  distinguished 
by  Swedenborg  from  '  continuous  degrees,'  or 
the  ordinary  degrees  of  comparison  which  mean 
merely  more  or  less  of  the  same  quality,  are 
thus  essentially  constructive  degrees;  they  are 
productive,  even  dynamic  in  character,  as  they 
imply  the  action  of  one  force  through  various 
media  under  a  fixed  law.  The  force  is  life 
itself;  the  media  are  the  series,  orders  and 
degrees  through  which  life  descends  from  its 
source  to  its  ultimates ;  the  descent  itself  is 
influx ;  and  the  law  of  relation  and  adaptation 
by  which  the  descent  is  possible  is  the  law  of 
Correspondence. 

It  is  by  virtue  of  correspondence  that  thought 
can  express  itself  in  the  definite  form  of  air- 
waves we  call  a  word — the  two  orders  of  exist- 
ence being  in  themselves  utterly  discrete.  So 
the  mind  finds  its  utterance  or  activity  in  the 
body,  and  the  whole  spiritual  world  its  ex- 
pression and  its  symbol  in  the  whole  physical 
universe.  There  is  no  confusion  of  substance 
even  by  means  of  the  finest  electron.  The  two 
worlds  are  absolutely  discrete  in  nature,  but 
they  communicate  by  a  perfect  correspondence. 

72 


PHILOSOPHY 

The  eye  itself  is  formed  in  correspondence  with 
the  nature  of  the  ether  vibrations  which  reach 
it,  and  so  is  capable  of  transmitting,  not  the 
ether,  but  its  motions  in  the  substance  of  the 
nerves  and  fibres  of  vision  and  so  to  the  seats 
of  sensation.  Here  these  motions  are  again 
taken  up  by  the  vessels  of  the  mind  in  the 
soul's  vision,  imagination,  thought  and  deter- 
mination, from  which  begins  the  reaction 
through  the  motor  nerves.  There  is  no  inter- 
fusion of  matter  and  thought.  There  is  a  series 
and  order  of  degrees,  and  there  is  a  corre- 
spondence, and  so  an  influx  of  motion  and  of 
force. 

Viewed  under  the  same  law,  the  cosmos 
is  a  system  of  spheres  emanating  from  the 
infinite  Divine.  The  same  law  which  governs 
the  series  God,  the  Spiritual  Word  and  Nature, 
controls  the  relation  of  the  successive  atmo- 
spheres— aura,  ether,  atmospheric  air.  The  same 
trinal  series  is  visible  in  the  succession  of  forms 
vortical,  spiral,  circular  in  the  formation  of 
the  material  atom.  It  is  the  transmission  of 
one  force  by  vibratory  motion  through  various 
media  that  constitutes  what  is  known  as  the 
transmutation  of  energy.  The  various  planes 
of  the  human  mind,  volitional,  intellectual  and 

73 


SWEDENBORG 

sensuous,  constitute  the  same  trinal  series,  and 
so  in  consequence  the  same  trinal  division  of 
the  angelic  heavens.  Of  these  the  highest,  or 
celestial,  is  characterized  by  the  spontaneity  of 
love,  the  second  or  spiritual  by  the  guidance 
of  faith,  and  the  lowest  by  the  simple  will  to 
obey  and  to  serve  the  power  from  above. 

In  this  universal  world-view,  the  all  of  being 
is  brought  into  the  unity  of  the  trinal  One ; 
not  by  confusion  of  substance  but  by  influx, 
degrees  and  thus  correspondence.  So  vast  is 
this  extension  of  the  law  of  Discrete  Degrees 
when  seen  to  govern  the  spiritual  as  well  as 
the  natural  world,  that  Swedenborg  speaks  of 
it,  in  his  later  period,  as  something  hitherto 
unknown.  In  its  natural  scope  he  had  indeed 
applied  this  law  during  the  earlier  period,  and 
had  been  guided  by  it  in  all  his  researches.  In 
his  Principia  he  develops  a  world  through  the 
three  degrees  of  Finites,  Actives  and  Ele- 
mentaries.  In  the  Soul  he  describes  the  effect 
by  contiguity,  and  the  transmission,  by  vibra- 
tion, of  the  ether  rays  upon  the  eye,  of  the 
eye  upon  the  nerve,  of  the  nerve  upon  the 
brain,  of  the  brain  upon  the  imagination,  of 
the  imagination  upon  the  intellect,  of  the 
intellect  upon  the  soul — all  by  virtue  of  the 

74 


perfect  correspondence  of  each  of  these  subtle 
media  with  the  force  communicated.  But  it 
was  only  the  greater  vision  of  the  later 
illumination  that  enabled  Swedenborg  to  see 
the  same  law  operating  in  the  action  of  God 
upon  the  spiritual  world,  and  of  the  spiritual 
world  upon  nature.  These  entities  are  nowhere 
interfused  or  blended  into  a  pantheistic  mass,  but 
for  ever  exist  in  their  discrete  degrees,  eternally 
distinct,  but  one  by  perfect  correspondence  and 
harmonious  interaction.  Hence  we  may  de- 
nominate Swedenborg's  philosophic  system  as 
that  of  a  Trinal  Monism. 

Without  these  three,  End,  Cause  and  Effect, 
nothing  is,  whether  we  speak  of  universal 
Being  or  the  least  existing  thing.  Each  degree 
constitutes  a  plane  of  being  by  itself ;  it  never 
becomes  the  other  in  its  own  series  by  any 
blending  or  continuity.  It  is  in  the  other  and 
actuates  it,  but  never  becomes  the  other.  The 
End  is  in  the  mediate  or  Cause,  and  through 
this  in  the  Effect  or  the  thing  ultimated. 
Effect  is  not  continuous  with  cause,  as  mere 
Cause  intensified,  nor  is  Cause  intensified  End. 
God  is  in  all  spiritual  things  without  losing 
Himself  in  them  by  confusion  with  them.  Spirit 
is  in  all  nature  and  in  all  matter,  giving  it 

75 


SWEDENBORG 

its  form  and  all  its  force,  without  itself  be- 
coming matter,  or  matter  by  any  process  of 
refinement  ever  becoming  spirit.  Just  as  a 
man's  will  is  in  his  thought,  and  both  are  in 
the  spoken  or  written  word,  yet  the  word  is 
not  thought,  and  the  thought  itself  is  not 
will ;  but  the  three  are  one  in  the  utterance, 
without  confusion  of  substance.  So  is  God  in 
His  going  forth:  is  in  all  things  and  the  Source 
of  all  things,  and  yet  these  things  are  not 
Himself. 

In  order  that  each  lower  degree  may  be  the 
form  and  expression  of  the  higher,  it  must 
perfectly  correspond.  Hence  the  Law  of 
Correspondence  is  the  correlative  of  the  Law  of 
Discrete  Degrees.  According  to  it  each  thing  in 
nature  corresponds  to  something  in  a  co-existing 
spiritual  world,  which  is  the  world  of  causes 
inasmuch  as  it  is  only  in  mind  or  spirit  that 
relations  have  a  real  existence  and  hence  that 
design  and  direction  are  possible.  Only  mind 
can  do  this.  And  finally,  all  things  in  the 
spiritual  world  have  their  real  being  in  those 
particular  ends  in  the  Divine  Love  from  which 
they  are  created. 


PHILOSOPHY 

THE  LAW  OF  CORRESPONDENCE  APPLIED  TO  THE 
INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SCRIPTURES 

The  application  of  the  Law  of  Correspondence 
to  the  interpretation  of  Holy  Scripture  as  actual 
Divine  revelation  becomes  manifest.  As  every- 
thing in  nature  has  a  Divine  end  and  a  spiritual 
meaning,  so  Divine  revelation,  expressed  in 
terms  taken  from  nature  and  from  the  thoughts 
and  images  of  the  human  mind,  becomes  ration- 
ally conceivable.  For  the  mind  can  conceive  of 
the  Divine  Spirit  selecting,  by  inspiration  in  the 
mind  of  the  amanuensis,  out  of  the  vocabulary 
not  only  of  nature  but  of  human  history  and 
tradition,  those  things,  countries,  persons  and 
events  which  may  be  the  outward  form  and 
symbols  of  inner,  spiritual  realities. 

So  may  God  '  open  His  mouth  in  parables ' 
and  make  known  '  by  things  that  are  made  the 
things  invisible,  even  His  eternal  power  and 
God-head.' 

Applied  to  the  conception  of  God  and  the 
Divine  Trinity,  the  law  of  Discrete  Degrees 
distinguishes  the  Father  as  the  Ease,  the  Divine 
Love  and  primal  Substance— from  the  Son  as 
the  Ezistere,  the  Wisdom  or  Word  by  whom  all 
things  are,  and  from  the  Holy  Spirit  as  that 

77 


SWEDENBOKG 

proceeding    and    perpetual    Operation    of    the 
Divine  Love  and  Wisdom  in  uses  in  the  created 
world.     It  is  in  the  sending  forth  of  the  Divine 
that  things  are  created.      Potentially  existing 
from    eternity  as  Love,   Wisdom   and  Use  in 
the    one    God,   Jehovah,    the    Trinity   becomes 
actual  in  time  in  the  Divine  Humanity  of  Jesus 
Christ.     In  the  Word  made   Flesh   the   Divine 
Love,  which  is  the  Father,  is  made   manifest, 
and  through  this  the  Holy  Spirit   is   breathed 
upon  the  world.     Thus   in   Him,  Jesus   Christ, 
'  dwelleth  all  the  fulness  of  the  Godhead  bodily.' 
The  Divine  Trinity  is  not  a  trinity  of  persons, 
but  of  person.     The   essential   trinity  of  love, 
wisdom  and  their  operation,  or  of  will,  thought 
and  work,  constitute  personality  whether  human 
or  divine.     In  the  work  of  redemption  Jehovah 
has  clothed  Himself  in  the  womb  of  a  virgin 
with  the  nature  of  man,  and  thus  in  the  person 
of  Jesus  Christ  taken  upon  Himself  the  burden 
of  all  the  accumulated  sinful  heredity  of  man- 
kind from  the  beginning.     In  the  life  of  Jesus 
Christ  on  earth  the  Divine  fought  with  those 
evils    admitted    into    the    infirm    humanity   by 
temptation  and  conquered  them.     By  so  doing 
He  overcame  the  hells  and  subdued  them  unto 
Himself,  and  was  enabled  with  the  cry  upon  the 

78 


PHILOSOPHY 

cross,  '  It  is  finished,'  to  say  to  all  men  '  Be 
of  good  cheer.  I  have  overcome  the  world.' 
Redemption  therefore  consisted,  not  in  a  plan 
of  judicature  by  which  divine  justice  was 
to  be  satisfied  by  a  vicarious  sacrifice,  but  it  is 
a  veritable  fait  accompli,  a  most  real  warfare 
with  and  victory  over  the  hells,  achieved  by 
the  one  Champion  of  human  spiritual  libert}-. 
This  liberty  is  attainable  by  men  through  faith 
and  obedience,  not  as  conditions  arbitrarily 
imposed,  but  as  essential  to  that  free  self- 
activity  on  man's  part,  which  enables  him  to 
become  a  voluntary  recipient  of  God's  love, 
and  a  willing  subject  of  His  Kingdom.  The 
worship  of  Jesus  Christ  in  His  Divine  Hu- 
manity as  the  one  and  only  God  of  heaven  and 
earth,  and  the  one  and  only  Saviour  of  man- 
kind, is  therefore  the  corner  stone  of  Sweden- 
borg's  religious  system  and  of  the  doctrine 
which  he  outlined  of  a  New  Christianity. 
Swedenborg's  religious  scheme  knows  nothing 
of  sect  or  nationality  as  affecting  the  Divine 
regard  for  man.  All  nations,  and  all  religions 
are  embraced  under  the  survey  of  the  Divine 
Providence,  which  looks  to  eternal  ends,  and 
strives  to  lift  men  continually  out  of  the 
evil  into  which  they  have  fallen  through  the 

79 


SWEDENBORG 

abuse  of    their   moral   freedom,   and    to    bring 
them  into  the  liberty  of  heaven. 

Since  God  in  Jesus  Christ  is  alone  worshipped 
in  all  the  heavens,  all  men  of  all  religions  who 
have  believed  and  worshipped,  however  blindly 
and  grossly  here,  will,  in  the  intermediate  World 
of  Spirits,  have  the  veils  of  heredity  and  local 
ignorance  removed,  and  come  to  see  the  one 
true  God  behind  all  the  various  symbols  by 
which  He  has  been  worshipped  here.  The  only 
essential  conditions  of  salvation  are  belief  in 
the  Divine  and  voluntary  self-subjection  to  the 
Divine  Law  because  it  is  Divine. 

Swedenborg's  religion  is  eminently  ethical  and 
practical.  According  to  him  the  '  Kingdom  of 
Heaven  is  a  kingdom  of  uses.'  '  All  religion,'  he 
says,  '  is  of  life,  and  the  life  of  religion  is  to  do 
good.'  But  by  doing  good  is  not  meant  elee- 
mosynary acts  of  benevolence  of  the  works  of 
piety.  It  is  rather  the  shunning  of  evils  as  sins 
against  God,  and  the  faithful  performance  of 
the  duties  of  one's  station  from  a  religious 
motive.  This  constitutes  the  essence  of  Charity 
in  the  sublime  sense  in  which  Swedenborg  uses 
this  much-abused  word.  Charity  is  simply  the 
love  of  God  to  man  exercised  by  means  of,  or 
through,  voluntary  human  agents.  Men,  by 

80 


PHILOSOPHY 

shunning  evils  as  sins,  open  the  channels  of  their 
life  for  the  influx  from  above,  and  the  outflow 
to  their  fellow-man  of  this  universal  divine 
benevolence  and  its  delights.  The  universe  is 
love  ;  but  love  requires  human  moral  freedom 
as  the  condition  of  its  own  exercise.  "When 
sinful  self-love  is  removed  by  man,  all  the  works 
that  he  performs  become  good  works,  and  all 
earthly  uses  become  the  ultimate  forms  in  which 
the  ends  of  Divine  love  are  realized  in  effect. 

THE  SPIRITUAL  HISTORY  OF  THE  WORLD 

As  life  is  essentially  love,  so  a  man's  life  is 
what  his  love  is :  his  intellect  and  his  thoughts 
are  the  servants  of  this  master,  and  the  spiritual 
body  is  his  immortal  sensuous  organism,  adapted 
to  uses  in  a  world  whose  atmospheres  are 
spiritual.  Death  is  therefore  but  a  cessation  of 
consciousness  in  the  material  plane  or  degree, 
when  the  body,  through  injury  or  decaj^,  ceases 
to  respond  to  the  vibrations  or  influx  of  the 
spiritual  life.  By  death  man  wakes  to  the  con- 
sciousness of  his  spiritual  body,  and  of  the 
objective  and  substantial  reality  of  the  spiritual 
world.  According  to  the  law  of  Discrete  Degrees, 
the  higher  may  enter  into  the  lower,  but  not 
G  81 


SWEDENBORG 

the  lower  into  the  higher.  On  the  plane  of 
physics,  the  ether  may  permeate  the  air ;  but 
not  the  air  the  ether.  As  matter  can  accord- 
ingly have  no  place  in  the  spiritual  world, 
there  is  no  resurrection  of  the  material  body. 
'  It  is  sown  a  natural,  it  is  raised  a  spiritual 
body.' 

Every  man  undergoes  his  own  judgment  in 
the  great  meeting-place  of  all  departed  spirits, 
the  intermediate  '"World  of  Spirits.'  This  is 
effected  by  the  unveiling,  in  the  light  of  eternal 
realities,  of  his  own  essential  character,  '  his 
ruling  love,'  and  led  by  this  the  spirit  now 
seeks  his  own  place,  whether  among  the  blessed 
or  the  lost.  But  there  also  occur,  in  the  World 
of  Spirits,  at  the  end  of  each  age  or  epoch 
of  the  world's  history,  a  great  general  or  Last 
Judgment,  in  which  the  spiritual  throngs  there 
are  restored  to  their  social  order.  This  order 
becomes  disturbed  in  the  course  of  a  long, 
period  by  the  accumulated  confusion  of  incon- 
gruous and  undeveloped  states,  and  these  inter- 
mediate spheres  through  which  the  heavenly 
influences  descend  to  man  need  to  be  clarified 
of  the  invading  clouds  of  evil.  Through  the 
clarifying  and  rectifying  adjustments  of  such 
a  judgment  a  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth 

82 


PHILOSOPHY 

come  into  being.  These  great  spiritual  Auf- 
kldrungen  result  in  great  moral  and  social 
revolutions  below.  The  history  of  the  world, 
therefore,  has  its  counterpart  and  its  true  key 
in  the  history  of  these  great  general  judgments 
in  the  World  of  Spirits  ;  and  these  are  sym- 
bolically revealed  in  the  Holy  Scriptures  in  the 
great  crises  and  epochal  upheavals  there  de- 
scribed. Swedenborg  accordingly  divides  the 
history  of  the  world  into  five  ages  or  churches, 
each  of  which  is  characterized  by  '  its  under- 
standing of  the  Word,'  i.e.  by  its  mode  of 
receiving  and  obeying  revealed  divine  truth. 
Thus  the  real  springs  of  the  history  of  mankind 
are  religious.  These  five  spiritual  ages  of  the 
world  are,  in  their  order : — 

I.  The  Adamic,  or  Eden  Age  :  when  the  Divine 
was  revealed  intuitively  to  the  child-like  per- 
ception of  the  race,  and  '  heaven  lay  about  us 
in  our  infancy.' 

II.  The  Noahtic  Age  :   the  age  of  the  living 
symbol,  when  symbols  were  chosen  out  of  nature 
to    stand     for     their     correspondent     spiritual 
essences   or   qualities.      Here   is   the    origin   of 
hieroglyphics,  of  mythology,  and  of  all  spoken 
and  written  language. 

III.  The  age  of  the  dead  symbol,  when  the 

83 


SWEDENBOBG 

living    idea   was    lost    and    the    natural   object 
substituted   in   its   place.      This  is   the   age   of 
'  Animism,'   the  beginning  of   the  historic  ages 
and   generally   but   erroneously    accounted    the 
beginning  of  religion.     In  reality  the  Animistic 
Age  is  that  of  religion's  lowest  decline  from  the 
primitive  monotheism  and  child-like   innocence 
of  the  Golden  Age.     This  third,  or  first  historic 
age,  is  that  of  the  Israelitish  Church,  its  written 
Word,    its    sacrificial   worship    and    obligatory 
ritual.     Revelation,  which  in  the  first  age  was 
by   immediate    vision,    and   in    the    second    by 
symbol    or    allegory    in    which    the    heavenly 
realities  were    clothed,    now    finds    in    a    fixed, 
divinely  sanctioned   ritual   the    only   means   of 
preserving  the  human  race  from  the  universal 
tendency  to  idol-worship  and  utter  materialism. 
IV.  The  Fourth  Age   is  that  of  the  Incar- 
nation  of    the   Word,   which   was   necessitated 
when  the  letter  of  Holy  Scripture  was  becoming 
of  no  effect  through  man's  traditions,  and  when 
the  salvation  of  mankind  could  be  effected  no 
longer  by  the  presence  of  the  Divine  in  nature, 
in  symbol,  in  written  law,  or  in  the  holy  ritual 
now   become   dead.     Only  by  the   presence  on 
earth  of  God  incarnate  in  human  nature,  and 
His  entering  through  human   temptations  into 

84 


PHILOSOPHY 

conflict  with  the  hells,  and  by  His  victory  over 
them,  could  the  human  race  now  be  saved  from 
self-destruction.  The  Christian  Church  thus 
founded  is  a  dispensation  of  the  letter  of  the 
Gospel ;  its  end  is  prophesied  by  Christ  Himself 
under  the  figure  of  the  '  end  of  the  world,'  when 
the  'love  of  many  shall  wax  cold'  and  'the 
powers  of  the  heavens  shall  be  shaken.'  These 
prophecies  are  realized  in  the  breaking  up  of 
the  old  conceptions  of  Christian  truth  based 
upon  the  '  letter  that  killeth.'  The  Christian 
Church,  or  the  Fourth  Spiritual  Age,  has  in  its 
turn,  according  to  the  divine  prophecy,  declined 
into  tritheistic  conceptions  of  God,  the  substi- 
tution of  '  faith  alone '  for  charity,  and  the 
building  up  of  purely  material  ideas  of  heaven 
and  of  the  Lord's  coming.  But  according  to 
Christ's  promise,  the  '  parables '  and  '  proverbs ' 
of  His  own  teaching  are  to  give  place  to  the 
'  plain  showing  of  the  Father.'  This  full  and 
final  revelation  is,  says  Swedenborg,  the  opening 
of  the  spiritual  sense  of  the  Word,  and  is 
correspondently  prefigured  in  the  language  of 
Scripture  as  the  coming  of  Christ '  in  the  clouds 
of  heaven,  with  power  and  great  glory.'  The 
fuller  revelation  or  coming  of  the  "Word  no  longer 
in  the  cloud,  or  symbol  of  the  letter  alone,  but  in 

85 


SWEDENBORG 

the  glory  of  spirit,  produced  in  the  spiritual  world 
the  great  changes  known  as  the  Last  Judgment. 
Hence  the  illusions  of  the  old  fictitious  heavens 
pass  away,  and  from  the  light  of  the  new 
heavens,  the  Holy  City,  the  Church  in  her  final 
and  perfected  glory,  descends  to  earth. 

V.  This  is  the  inauguration  of  the  Fifth  Age 
of  the  World,  the  New  Jerusalem  '  descending 
from  God  out  of  heaven,'  and  whose  religion 
shall  be  the  worship  of  Jesus  Christ  in  His 
Divine  Humanity  as  God  and  the  restored  union 
of  charity  and  faith  in  man's  religious  life. 
From  this  real  inaugurative  judgment,  of  which 
Swedenborg  claims  to  have  been  a  witness  in 
the  World  of  Spirits,  have  flowed  down  into  this 
world  of  effects  those  marvellous  changes  which 
have  constituted  what  all  men  testify  to  wit- 
nessing in  these  days — the  beginning  of  a  new 
age  of  the  world.  It  is  a  new  spiritual  age, 
distinguished  by  its  mark  as  a  '  new  church,'  in 
the  broad  and  catholic  sense  in  which  Sweden- 
borg uses  this  term. 


86 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE    DIVINE    ALTRUISM,    OR   LOVE    THE    FINAL 
CAUSE   OF   CREATION 

SWEDENBORG'S  entire  system,  regarded  as  a  unit, 
finds  its  highest  and  most  complete  summariza- 
tion in  the  doctrine  of  the  Divine  Love  as  the 
final  cause  of  creation.  In  the  earlier  period 
the  Infinite  is  regarded  as  the  source  of  the 
universe,  and  creation  begins  with  a  conatus 
of  motion  in  the  Infinite.  In  the  Pnncipia  we 
are  told  that  all  existence  originates  in  motion 
from  the  Infinite  ;  and  with  motion  all  modifica- 
tion, all  variety,  all  force,  all  activity.  Motion 
is  subject  to  the  threefold  analysis,  conatus, 
motion  and  force.  Pure  motion  consists  in 
the  internal  state,  or  conatus.  It  is  differen- 
tiated from  substance  itself,  and,  while  defined 
as  the  origin  of  all  existence,  still  is  declared 
to  '  originate  in  a  more  subtle  element  than  that 
in  which  its  activity  is  manifest'  (Prindpia,  i. 
137).  Again,  we  are  told  that  motion  itself  is 
not  substantial,  but  produces  an  appearance 

87 


SWEDENBORG 

of  substance  and  form.  The  internal  motion 
is  the  only  producing  power,  for  without  it 
there  can  be  neither  centre  nor  circumference, 
neither  contingency  nor  limit;  but  as  a  centre 
and  a  conatus  it  can  exist  among  finites  and 
in  space. 

This  concept  of  motion  as  the  beginning  of 
creation,  mathematically  or  formally  complete, 
lacks  the  element  of  substance  itself,  or  the 
ivhat  that  moves  and  is  moved.  It  is  only  in 
the  Sapientia  Angelica  that  Swedenborg  reaches 
the  solution  in  the  doctrine  of  the  Good  as 
the  substance  of  all  things  and  Truth  as  the 
Form  of  Good.  This  dual  classification  into 
Good  and  Truth  as  essential  Substance  and 
Form  exhausts  the  entire  realm  of  Being,  and 
gives  us  the  dynamic  explanation  of  the  universe. 
For  in  Good  we  have  the  end,  the  (Jausa  finalis 
itself  of  creation,  or  that  which  is  loved  by 
the  infinite  Creator;  and  Truth  is  that  inmost 
law,  or  Causa,  efficient,  by  which  all  things  take 
form  in  finite  existence;  and  in  use,  or  action, 
we  have  the  end  ultimated.  Love,  Wisdom 
and  Use  become  now  the  divinely  humanized 
Infinite  in  place  of  the  purely  mathematical 
conception  of  a  causeless  conatus  and  motion. 
The  Conatus  now  becomes  that  of  the  essential 

88 


THE    DIVINE    ALTRUISM 

nature  of  love  itself.  The  essence  of  love  is 
conjunction ;  its  activity  is  only  reciprocal. 
There  can  be  no  love  without  an  object,  therefore 
love,  of  necessity,  creates  an  object,  and  from 
necessity  makes  that  object  capable  of  freely 
reciprocating  and  returning  the  love  bestowed. 
Hence  Swedenborg  lays  down  the  funda- 
mental law  and  cause  of  creation^  '  Thai  the 
divine  love  and  the  divine  wisdom  cannot  be 
and  exist  except  in  other  beings  or  existences 
created  from  itself.  For  love  consists  in  our 
willing  what  is  our  own  to  be  another's  and 
feeling  his  delight  as  delight  in  ourselves.  It 
is  an  essential  of  love  not  to  love  itself,  but 
to  love  others  and  to  bo  joined  to  them  by 
love  ;  it  is  also  an  essential  of  love  to  be  beloved 
by  others,  for  thereby  there  is  a  conjunction.  .  .  . 
Hence  it  is  evident  that  the  Divine  love  can- 
not be  and  exist  otherwise  than  in  other  beings 
or  existences  whom  it  loves  and  by  whom  it 
is  beloved :  for  when  such  a  quality  exists  in 
all  love  it  must  needs  exist  in  the  greatest 
degree,  that  is,  infinitely  in  Love  Itself  (Divine 
Love  and  Wisdom,  47-8). 

The  reciprocal  love  which  love  demands  from 
its  object  can  only  be  exercised  by  an  object 
that  is  free.  The  universe  as  an  automaton 

89 


SWEDENBORG 

acting  only  under  the  compulsion  of  divine 
law  would  never  furnish  the  response  which 
the  divine  creative  love  demands.  Hence  in 
all  creation  there  is,  with  the  evolution  of  forms 
recipient  of  divine  life,  at  the  same  time  an 
evolution  of  freedom.  All  created  forms,  even 
of  the  lowest  mineral  or  atmospheric  atom,  act 
from  a  certain  conatus,  or  motive,  as  if  from 
some  power  of  their  own;  but  really  as  im- 
pelled by  the  divine  wisdom.  The  vegetative 
and  the  animal  souls  are  but  an  instinctive 
following  of  the  laws  of  their  special  service 
in  the  kingdom  of  uses.  Only  in  man  is  reached 
the  entire  moral  freedom  that  is  capable  of 
returning  a  free  answer  to  the  love  of  the 
Creator,  and  this  implies  equally  the  ability  to 
turn  away  from  that  love.  Nature  is  but  a 
ladder  of  uses  by  which  all  things  ascend  in 
higher  and  higher  degrees  of  love  and  adoration 
to  the  Deity. 

The  highest  exercise  of  freedom  is  in  man's 
self-compulsion.  The  ability  to  compel  one's 
self  is  the  highest  gift  of  God  to  man  and  is 
that  upon  which  rests  the  whole  order  of 
creation,  which  is  that  of  action  and  reaction. 
In  order  that  there  shall  be  an  other  to  the 
Infinite  and  the  Self-existent,  that  other  must 

90 


THE    DIVINE    ALTRUISM 

be  finite  and  dead.  Hence  creation  is  a  re- 
ceding of  the  spheres  of  life  emanating  from 
God  into  those  extremes  where  existence 
becomes  utterly  passive,  inert  and  resistent; 
and  the  material  world  is  that  sphere  of  exist- 
ence which  has  the  ability  to  react  against  the 
living  force  of  mind  and  life,  and  assert  itself 
as  the  supreme  and  utter  other  to  life  and  the 
infinite.  Morally,  freedom  must  consist  in  the 
ability  to  love  self  alone  utterly  and  to  deny 
truth  ;  to  turn  light  into  darkness  and  heat  into 
cold.  All  this  is  necessary  to  the  creation  of  a 
moral  world.  But  even  in  the  dead  object 
there  must  be  a  force  and  will  to  react,  and 
this  is  divinely  imparted  and  constitutes  the 
gift  of  moral  freedom,  or  the  ability  to  act, 
according  to  Swedenborg's  formula,  sicut  a  se — 
as  if  of  oneself, 

The  principles  of  human  freedom  are  thus  set 
forth  by  Swedenborg  in  treating  of  the  Laws 
of  Divine  Providence  in  his  work  entitled  The 
Apocalypse  Explained  (1150). 

'  The  fourth  law  of  the  Divine  Providence  is, 
That  the  understanding  and  the  will  should  not 
be  in  the  least  degree  compelled  by  another, 
since  all  compulsion  by  another  takes  away 
freedom ;  but  that  man  should  compel  himself ; 

91 


for  to  compel  himself  is  to  act  from  freedom. 
Man's  freedom  belongs  to  his  will ;  from  the 
will  it  exists  in  the  thought  of  the  understand- 
ing ;  and  by  means  of  the  thought  it  shows 
itself  in  speech  and  in  the  action  of  the  body. 
For  man  says,  when  he  wills  anything  from 
freedom,  "  I  will  to  think  this,"  "  I  will  to  speak 
this,"  and  "I  will  to  do  this."  From  freedom 
of  will  he  has  also  the  faculty  of  thinking,  of 
speaking  and  of  acting,  for  the  will  gives  this 
faculty  because  it  is  freedom.  Since  freedom 
belongs  to  man's  will,  it  belongs  also  to  his 
love,  since  nothing  else  in  man  constitutes 
freedom,  but  the  love  which  belongs  to  his  will. 
The  reason  is,  that  love  is  the  life  of  man  ; 
for  man  is  of  the  same  quality  as  his  love ; 
consequently  that  which  proceeds  from  the  love 
of  his  will,  proceeds  from  his  life.  Hence  it 
is  evident  that  freedom  belongs  to  man's  will, 
to  his  love  and  to  his  life  ;  consequently,  that 
it  makes  one  with  his  proprium  (or  selfhood), 
and  with  his  nature  and  disposition.  Now 
because  the  Lord  desires  that  everything  which 
proceeds  from  Himself  to  man  should  be  appro- 
priated to  man  as  if  it  were  his  own,  for 
otherwise  there  would  be  in  man  no  means  of 
reciprocity  by  which  conjunction  is  effected, 

92 


THE    DIVINE    ALTRUISM 

therefore  it  is  a  law  of  the  Divine  Providence, 
that  the  understanding  and  the  will  of  man 
should  not  be  at  all  compelled  by  another.' 

The  reconciliation  of  human  freedom  with 
divine  sovereignty  lies  in  the  hidden,  unconscious 
operation  of  the  divine  love  upon  the  inmost 
affections  of  man. 

4  The  reason  that  man  does  not  perceive  the 
operation  of  the  Divine  Providence  is,  that 
such  perception  would  take  away  his  freedom, 
and  hence  the  faculty  of  thinking  as  if  from 
himself,  and  with  it  also  all  the  enjoyment 
of  life,  so  that  he  would  be  like  an  automaton 
in  which  there  is  no  principle  of  reciprocity. 
He  would  also  be  a  slave,  not  a  free  man. 
The  principal  cause  that  the  Divine  Providence 
moves  so  secretly  that  there  is  scarcely  any 
vestige  of  it  apparent,  although  it  operates 
upon  the  most  minute  things  of  man's  thought 
and  will  which  regard  his  internal  state,  is, 
that  the  Lord  continually  desires  to  impress 
His  love  upon  man,  and  through  it  His  wisdom, 
and  thus  to  create  him  into  His  image.  There- 
fore it  is  that  the  operation  of  the  Lord  is 
upon  man's  love,  and  from  it  upon  his  under- 
standing, and  not  from  his  understanding  upon 
his  love.  The  love,  with  its  affections,  which 

93 


SWEDENBORG 

are  manifold  and  innumerable,  is  not  perceived 
by  man  except  from  a  most  general  feeling, 
and  that  in  so  small  a  degree  that  it  is 
scarcely  perceptible  at  all ;  and  yet  man  is  to 
be  led  from  one  affection  of  love  into  another, 
according  to  the  connection  in  which  they  are 
arranged,  in  order  that  he  may  be  reformed 
and  saved.  This  is  incomprehensible,  not  only 
to  man  but  also  to  the  angels.  If  man  dis- 
covered anything  of  these  arcana,  he  could 
not  be  withdrawn  from  leading  himself,  even 
though  it  were  continually  from  heaven  into 
hell  ;  notwithstanding  he  is  constantly  led  by 
the  Lord  from  hell  into  heaven  ;  for  from  him- 
self he  constantly  acts  against  [Divine]  order, 
but  the  Lord  constantly  according  to  it ' 
(The  Apocalypse  Explained,  1153). 

The  two  forces  of  the  creative  love,  therefore, 
lie  at  the  base  of  human  history ;  the  wandering 
from  God,  the  return  to  God  ;  the  descent  or 
fall  of  man  from  the  pristine  innocence  of  his 
infantile  or  golden  age  down  to  the  beginning 
of  the  Ascent  in  Christ,  the  New  Adam,  as 
humanity  redeemed.  The  same  law  operates  in 
the  physical  universe  in  two  forces,  the  centri- 
fugal force  creating  the  '  other '  to  the  utmost 
extreme,  the  centripetal  drawing  the  :  other ' 

94 


THE    DIVINE    ALTRUISM 

back  to  itself.  The  equilibrium  of  the  two 
forces  establishing  the  fixed  orbit  of  the  planet 
is  nature's  reflection  of  the  plane  of  human  moral 
freedom. 

The  creation  of  the  other  than  itself  by 
emanations  is  effected  by  degrees,  or  in  suc- 
cessive atmospheres  or  auras,  receding  farther 
and  farther  from  the  source  of  life  and  motion 
until  they  become  inactive  or  dead.  In  the 
Principia  and  the  Regnum  Animate  these  are 
treated  of  as  physical  spheres,  even  to  the 
highest  or  universal  aura  in  which  the  soul 
lives,  as  it  were,  in  its  own  element,  and  which 
is  above  time  and  space  and  knows  only  the 
force  of  gravity  or  the  attraction  and  repulsion 
which  are  most  nearly  allied  to  the  forces  of 
love  and  so  of  the  moral  world.  Beneath  these 
are  successively  the  solar  vortex,  or  the  magnetic 
aura,  the  interplanetary  aura,  or  the  ether,  and 
last  of  all  the  atmospheric  air  encompassing 
each  planet.  But  in  the  Sapientia  Angelica 
there  is  a  wonderful  transformation  of  these 
physical  auras  into  the  great  dual  corresponden- 
tial  system  of  the  Two  Worlds.  Here  the 
highest  or  innermost  aura,  the  soul's  atmosphere 
of  the  Regnum  Animate,  becomes  the  complete 
spiritual  world,  possessing  its  own  sun  and 

95 


SWEDENBORG 

its  own  trinal  succession  of  atmospheres  or 
heavens,  which  at  once  are  the  types  and 
furnish  the  emanating  forces  of  the  natural  sun 
and  of  the  physical  atmospheres  of  the  material 
world. 

'  "When  I  was  in  enlightenment,'  says  Sweden- 
borg,  meaning  after  his  spiritual  illumination, 
'I  perceived  that,  from  the  light  and  the  heat 
of  the  sun  of  the  spiritual  world,  spiritual 
atmospheres  were  created  one  from  another 
which  were  in  themselves  substantial:  but 
.  .  .  the  sun  from  which  all  natural  things 
proceed  was  created  at  the  same  time ;  and 
through  this,  in  like  manner  by  means  of 
heat  and  light,  three  atmospheres  environing 
the  three  former  ones'  (True  Christian  Re- 
ligion, 76).  Here  we  have  the  ultimate  ex- 
planation of  Swedenborg's  doctrine  of  the 
Universe  as  an  '  animated  mechanism.'  The 
material  world,  dead,  inert,  powerless  of  itself, 
as  the '  other '  to  the  World  of  Spirits,  is  never- 
theless actuated  everywhere,  even  to  its  most 
minute  atmospheric  particles,  by  the  corre- 
sponding particles  of  the  spiritual  atmospheres 
emanating  from  the  sun  of  the  spiritual  world ; 
which  sun  itself  is  the  first  effulgence  of  the 
Love  and  "Wisdom  of  the  Creator.  The  nature 

96 


THE  DIVINE  ALTRUISM 

of  the  correspondence  of  the   Two   Worlds   is 
thus  set  forth : 

'  The  Divine  Proceeding  is  what,  around  Him, 
appears  to  the  angels  as  a  sun ;  from  this  pro- 
ceeds His  Divine  through  spiritual  atmospheres 
which  He  has  created  for  the  transmission  of 
light  and  heat  down  to  the  angels,  and  which 
He  has  accommodated  to  the  life  both  of  their 
minds  and  their  bodies,  in  order  that  they  may 
receive  intelligence  from  the  light,  also  in  order 
that  they  may  see,  and  also  that  they  may 
breathe  according  to  correspondence;  for  the 
angels  breathe  like  men.  Also  that  they  may 
receive  love  from  the  heat,  may  feel,  and  also 
in  order  that  their  hearts  may  beat  according  to 
correspondence ;  for  the  angels  have  a  beating 
of  the  heart  like  men.  These  spiritual  atmo- 
spheres are  increased  in  density  by  discrete 
degrees  .  .  .  down  to  the  angels  of  the  lowest 
heaven,  to  whom  they  thus  become  accommo- 
dated. Hence  it  is  that  the  angels  of  the 
highest  heaven  live  as  it  were  in  a  pure  aura, 
the  angels  of  the  middle  heaven  as  it  were  in 
ether,  and  the  angels  of  the  lowest  heaven  as  it 
were  in  air.  Under  these  atmospheres,  in  each 
heaven  are  earths  on  which  the  angels  dwell ' 
(Divine  Wisdom,  xii.  5). 
H  97 


SWEDENBORG 

*  But  it  is  to  be  known  that  the  atmospheres 
originating  from  the  sun  of  heaven,  properly 
speaking,  are  not  three,  but  six  ;  three  above 
the  sun  of  our  world  and  three  below  the  sun 
of  our  world.  The  three  above  the  sun  of  our 
world  continually  and  immediately  follow  the 
three  natural  atmospheres,  and  cause  man  in 
the  natural  world  to  be  able  to  think  and  feel. 
For  the  atmospheres  originating  from  the  sun 
of  our  world  have  not  life  in  themselves, 
because  they  originate  from  a  sun  which  is  pure 
fire  ;  whereas  the  atmospheres  originating  from 
the  sun  of  heaven,  which  is  the  Lord,1  have  life 
in  themselves  because  they  originate  from  a  sun 
which  is  pure  love  and  pure  wisdom.  The 
atmospheres  originating  from  the  sun  of  our 
world,  which  is  pure  fire,  cause  those  things 
which  are  in  the  earth  and  in  the  human  body 
to  remain  in  existence,  and  to  be  held  together 
in  connection,  and  not  to  be  changed  except 

1  Swedenborg  is  only  intensifying  the  symbol  when  he  says 
here  that  the  sun  of  heaven  is  the  Lord  ;  for  in  Divine  Love  and 
Wisdom,  93,  he  declares  that  '  that  sun  is  not  God,  but  it  is  the 
proceeding  from  the  Divine  Love  and  the  Divine  Wisdom  of 
God-Man :  in  like  manner  the  light  and  heat  from  that  sun.  .  .  . 
Beware  of  thinking  that  the  sun  of  the  spiritual  world  is  God 
Himself  1  God  is  Man.  The  first  proceeding  from  His  love  and 
wisdom  is  a  fiery  spiritual  principle  which  appears  in  the  sight 
of  the  angels  as  a  sun.' 

98 


THE    DIVINE    ALTRUISM 

according  to  the  laws  of  natural  order.  Hence 
is  the  difference  of  things  in  the  natural  and 
spiritual  worlds '  (Last  Judgment,  31). 

Together  with  the  translation  of  the  divine 
love  and  wisdom  as  spiritual  forms  into  their 
equivalents  in  the  natural  world's  heat  and 
light,  there  comes  the  representation  of  mental 
states  in  the  spiritual  world  by  the  fixed  times 
and  spaces  of  the  world  of  nature.1 

Times  and  spaces  are  determined  in  the 
spiritual  world,  says  Swedenborg,  by  mental 
states  of  affection  and  thought ;  whereas  they 
are  determined  in  the  natural  world  by  the 
fixed  standards  of  the  earth's  revolutions  and 
dimensions.  "While  the  spiritual  times  and 
spaces  are,  therefore,  '  appearances '  in  the 

1  An  interesting  inquiry  is  prompted  here  as  to  the  real 
relation  of  Swedenborg's  doctrines  of  times  and  spaces  being  fixed 
in  the  natural  world  but  existing  as  appearances,  or  phenomen- 
ally, in  the  spiritual  world,  with  Kant's  Phenomenology  of  the 
Spirit  and  the  mediatory  function  in  the  ^Esthetic  of  the  time- 
and-space  forms  of  judgment.  The  sources  of  this  comparison 
are  given  in  the  Introduction  on  Kant  and  Smederiborg  by  Frank 
Sewall  to  Goerwitz's  translation  of  Kant's  Dreams  of  a  Spirit  Seer, 
published  by  Swan  Sonnenschein  &  Co.,  London,  1900.  It  is  an 
interesting  coincidence  that  Swedenborg's  little  work  on  the 
Two  Worlds,  De  Commercio,  or  Influx,  published  in  1769,  should 
have  been  followed  the  next  year  by  Immanuel  Kant's  Inaugural 
Address  on  the  same  theme,  '  De  Mundo  sensibile  et  de  Mundo 
intelligibile.' 

99 


SWEDENBORG 

spiritual  world,  they  are  nevertheless  real 
because  they  are  necessary  to  the  spirit's 
existence  in  an  objective  world,  i.e.  in  a  world 
of  that  which  is  other  than  himself;  and  such 
a  world  is  morally  necessary  to  man's  exercise 
of  the  neighbourly  love  which  is  the  divine 
altruism  or  charity  taking  finite  form  in  himself. 
Heaven  is  therefore  not  a  world  of  personalities 
submerged  and  dissolved  in  the  one  abyss  of 
Being,  but  a  world  of  the  utmost  distinctness 
of  personality,  each  member  being  a  distinct, 
special  '  form  of  charity '  inspired  with  the 
love  of  others,  and  governed  by  the  moral 
law  of  use,  or  of  service  to  the  neighbour, 
which  is  the  fundamental  law  of  creation  from 
first  to  last  and  from  last  to  first.  The  spatial 
distinctions  of  the  spiritual  world  are,  there- 
fore, most  real,  because  they  are  fundamental 
to  the  existence  of  man  in  neighbourly  rela- 
tions ;  they  are  made  even  more  real,  by  deriving 
their  essence  from  living  states  of  mind,  than 
are  the  actual  spaces  and  times  of  nature  which 
depend  on  the  mechanical  standards  of  the 
natural  world. 


100 


THE    DIVINE    ALTRUISM 

THE  GREAT  CATEGORIES  :   THE  Two  KINGDOMS, 
THE  THREE  DEGREES 

Finally,  the  great  categories  under  which 
Swedenborg  embraces  all  philosophical  concepts 
are  those  of  the  Two  Kingdoms — Substance 
and  Form,  and  of  the  Three  Degrees — End, 
Cause  and  Effect.  The  substance  of  things 
is  their  good :  the  form  of  things  is  their  truth, 
or  that  by  which  the  good  appears  and  acts. 
But  good,  being  also  the  end  desired  of  the 
purpose  in  anything,  is  of  the  will  and  love  : 
in  like  manner  the  form  of  its  expression  and 
activities  is  of  the  intellect.  Hence  all  that 
pertains  to  substance  is  of  the  will  or  voluntary 
kingdom,  as  all  that  pertains  to  form  is  of  the 
intellectual  kingdom. 

Man  and  nature  not  living  of  themselves,  but 
as  recipients  of  life  from  God,  are  constituted 
the  twofold  receptacles  of  the  inflowing  Divine. 
Man  by  his  will  and  intellect  receives  the  love 
and  truth  which  are  the  essentials  of  his  life  ; 
and  nature  receives  the  same  inflowing  principles 
in  the  heat  and  light  and  the  respective  physical 
forms  and  forces  proceeding  from  the  natural 
sun.  So  do  the  two  worlds  correspond  in  every 
minutest  form  and  activity;  and  there  is  no 

101 


SWEDENBORG 

form  or  function  in  one  that  may  not  be  ex- 
pressed in  the  terms  of  the  other,  the  heat 
principle  having  everywhere  a  hidden  relation 
to  love  and  to  good,  the  light  principle  being 
always  manifestly  related  to  truth.  Upon  this 
law  of  the  basic  or  constructive  relations  of 
nature  and  spirit  rests  Swedenborg's  doctrine 
of  the  internal  sense  of  the  divinely  dictated 
Word,  and  of  the  possibility  of  its  discovery  by 
means  of  the  Science  of  Correspondences.  Upon 
the  same  dual  constitution  of  nature  rests  all 
the  imagery  of  language,  the  possibility  of 
speech,  and  the  laws  of  the  mind's  growth  and 
education. 

Besides  the  Two  Kingdoms  of  Good  and 
Truth  as  the  essential  substance  and  form  of 
things,  Swedenborg  also  furnishes  philosophy 
with  a  new  schema,  of  the  activities  of  these  two 
Kingdoms,  in  their  respective  three  Discrete 
Degrees  of  End,  Cause  and  Effect.  These  in 
their  descending  order  he  names  the  Celestial, 
the  Spiritual  and  the  Natural  degrees  of  life. 
The  celestial,  characterized  by  love,  is  the 
highest  of  these  planes  of  life  in  man  or  angel ; 
the  spiritual,  where  truth  is  the  prevailing 
motive,  is  the  mediate,  and  beneath  these  two 
there  is  the  plane  of  action  into  which  both 

1 02 


THE    DIVINE    ALTRUISM 

descend  and  find  their  ultimate  expression  and 
use.  To  man's  will  and  intellect  there  is  added 
therefore  the  body  of  sense  and  action.  The 
normal  activity  of  the  body  is  that  of  obedience 
to  the  intellect  which  carries  out  the  desire  of 
the  will.  So  on  the  largest  scale  nature,  as 
effect,  is  the  body  obedient  to  the  impulses  of 
spirit,  or  mind:  and  these  are  the  great  instru- 
mental cause  itself  moved  and  actuated  by  the 
Supreme  End,  the  Good  of  the  divine  love. 

God,  Spirit,  Nature ;  Love,  Wisdom  and  Use — 
such  is  the  eternal  Trinity  which  is  reflected 
alike  in  the  macrocosm  and  in  the  microcosm, 
in  the  universe  and  in  man.  By  these  successive 
degrees  in  their  descending  order  God  enters 
immediately  into  man  from  within  and  from 
above,  without  his  knowledge,  but  as  the  very 
life  itself  from  which  man  acts  in  all  his  con- 
scious life.  This  is  the  subconscious,  or  in- 
stinctive life  of  the  man.  From  below  or  from 
without,  through  the  senses  and  into  the  plane 
of  the  body's  activity  and  bondage  to  nature, 
God  also  enters  into  man's  consciousness  by 
the  mediate  influx  of  what  the  senses  perceive 
and  what  the  spirit  imbibes  from  the  world. 
Intermediate  between  these  inflowings  is  the 
rational  plane  of  the  intellect  and  of  the  will's 

103 


SWEDENBORG 

moral  freedom,  and  here  is  born  the  spiritual 
man,  or  that  principle  where  man  leaves  the 
animal  and  natural  plane  and  enters  the  truly 
human  plane ,  of  his  immortal  and  angelic  life. 
Here,  as  man  consciously  and  of  his  free-will 
puts  on  the  hitherto  subconscious  states  of  the 
higher  life  and  makes  them  his  own,  he  is  born 
again  as  the  child  of  God  and  made  an  heir  to 
the  kingdom  of  heaven.  The  ascending  ladder 
of  life  now  enables  man  to  bring  all  the  trea- 
sures of  nature  into  the  service  of  the  Creator, 
and  so  to  realize  the  reciprocal  conjunction  of 
God  with  the  world.  The  spirit,  when  freed 
from  the  bonds  of  a  time-and-space  world  and 
of  a  perishable  body,  finds  its  full  social  develop- 
ment in  the  Maximus  Homo,  or  heaven,  as  the 
perfected  society,  the  city  of  God.  In  heaven's 
life  of  mutual  love  and  service,  inspired  by  the 
devout  adoration  of  the  Creator,  the  divine 
altruism  finds  its  complete  actualization  and 
Love,  as  the  final  Cause  of  creation,  has  attained 
its  End. 


104 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE   LAST   DAYS   AND   DYING   TESTIMONY 

SWEDENBOBG  completed  the  True  Christian 
Religion,  that  great  summary  of  the  Theology 
of  the  New  Church,  in  his  eighty-third  year. 
After  his  repeated  journeys  abroad,  chiefly  to 
Holland  and  England,  for  the  publishing  of  his 
works  in  those  countries,  where  greater  religious 
freedom  prevailed  than  in  his  own,  he  sought 
in  London  the  peaceful  refuge  of  his  last  days. 
Here  he  lived  in  the  simplest  manner,  beloved 
by  little  children  and  by  the  humble  people 
with  whom  he  lodged.  Says  Pastor  Ferelius, 
the  Chaplain  of  the  Swedish  Embassy,  who  was 
with  him  frequently  during  these  last  days : 
'  Some  might  think  that  Assessor  Swedenborg 
was  eccentric  and  whimsical,  but  the  very 
reverse  was  the  case.  He  was  very  pleasant 
and  easy  in  company,  talked  on  every  subject 
that  came  up,  accommodating  himself  to  the 
ideas  of  the  company,  and  he  never  spoke  of 
his  own  views  unless  he  was  asked  about  them. 

105 


SWEDENBORG 

But  if  he  noticed  that  any  one  asked  him  im- 
pertinent questions,  intending  to  make  sport  of 
him,  he  immediately  gave  such  an  answer  that 
the  questioner  was  silenced  without  being  the 
wiser  for  his  asking.' 

The  dress  that  he  usually  wore  when  he  went 
out  to  visit  was  a  suit  of  black  velvet  made 
after  an  old  fashion,  with  full  ruffles  at  the 
wrist,  a  curious  hilted  sword,  and  a  gold-headed 
cane.  But  he  lived  mostly  a  retired  life.  Mrs. 
Shearsmith,  at  whose  house  he  lived,  said  that 
'  he  was  a  good-natured  man ;  and  that  he  was 
a  blessing  to  the  house;  for  that  they  had 
harmony  and  good  business  while  he  was  with 
them.'  She  also  related  that  he  announced 
before  his  death  when  this  would  take  place, 
and  '  he  was  as  much  pleased  as  if  he  were  to 
have  a  holiday  or  to  go  to  some  merrymaking.' 
Shortly  before  his  death  he  wrote  to  Mr. 
Wesley  that  in  the  world  of  spirits  he  had 
learned  of  his  desire  to  see  him.  Mr.  Wesley 
on  receiving  this  letter  acknowledged  to  those 
present  that  this  was  indeed  the  case,  although 
he  had  expressed  this  desire  to  no  one,  and  he 
replied,  fixing  a  time  for  a  visit  to  Swedenborg 
when  he  should  return  to  London  from  a  six- 
weeks'  preaching  tour  upon  which  he  was  about 
106 


THE    LAST    DAYS 

to  set  out.  Swedenborg  wrote  in  reply  that  it 
would  then  be  too  late,  as  he  should  '  finally ' 
enter  the  spiritual  world  on  the  twenty-ninth 
day  of  March.  As  the  day  of  his  death,  thus 
foretold  by  himself,  approached  he  was  visited 
by  the  Pastor  Ferelius  for  the  purpose  of 
administering  to  him  the  Sacrament  of  the 
Lord's  Supper.  On  being  exhorted  by  the 
clergyman  in  that  solemn  moment  to  declare 
whether  he  had  written  truly  concerning  his 
intromission  into  the  spiritual  world  and  what 
he  had  witnessed  there,  Swedenborg  answered 
that  every  statement  he  had  made  concerning 
the  opening  of  his  spiritual  sight  and  the  things 
of  the  other  life  was  true,  and  that  he  '  could 
have  written  more  if  he  had  been  permitted.' 
When  asked  if  he  would  receive  the  Sacrament 
he  answered,  '  With  thankfulness.'  '  I  then 
asked,'  continued  the  clergyman,  '  whether  he 
acknowledged  himself  to  be  a  sinner.'  'Cer- 
tainly, as  long  as  I  carry  about  me  this  sinful 
body,'  was  the  reply.  And  then,  with  much 
devotion,  folding  his  hands  and  uncovering  his 
head,  he  read  the  confession  of  sins  and  re- 
ceived the  holy  Sacrament.  It  was  on  his 
death-bed  that  he  made  thej  reply  to  the  Rev. 
Thomas  Hartley,  who  had  asked  him  whether 
107 


SWEDENBORG 

all  that  he  had  written  was  true,  or  whether 
any  part  or  parts  were  to  be  excepted,  'I  have 
written  nothing  but  the  truth,  as  you  will  have 
more  and  more  confirmed  to  you  all  the  days 
of  your  life,  provided  you  keep  close  to  the 
Lord,  and  faithfully  serve  Him  by  shunning 
evils  as  sins  against  Him,  and  diligently 
searching  His  Word,  which  from  beginning  to 
end  bears  incontestable  witness  to  the  truth  of 
the  doctrines  I  have  delivered  to  the  world.' 

Swedenborg  passed  away  in  London  on  Sun- 
day, March  29,  1772,  aged  eighty-four  years. 
His  remains  were  interred,  with  all  the  ceremonies 
of  the  Lutheran  ritual,  in  the  Swedish  Ulrica 
Eleanora  Church,  Ratcliffe  Highway,  London,  E., 
where  their  resting-place  was  marked  later  by 
a  suitable  memorial  slab  and  tablet.  In  the 
Swedish  House  of  Nobles,  on  October  7,  a 
eulogy  was  pronounced  upon  him  by  M.  Sandel, 
counsellor  of  the  Board  of  Mines,  in  the  name 
of  the  Royal  Academy  of  Stockholm.  The 
Prime  Minister,  von  Hopken,  writing  the  follow- 
ing year  to  General  Tuxen,  remarks :  '  The  late 
Swedenborg  was  certainly  a  pattern  of  sincerity, 
virtue,  and  piety,  and  at  the  same  time,  in  my 
opinion,  the  most  learned  man  in  this  kingdom.' l 

1  Documents,  vol.  ii.  p.  410. 

108 


THE    LAST    DAYS 

Shortly  before  Swedenborg's  death  Dr.  Mes- 
siter  wrote  to  the  Professor  of  Divinity  at 
Edinburgh  University :  '  As  I  have  had  the 
honour  of  being  frequently  admitted  to  the 
author's  company  when  he  was  in  London  and 
to  converse  with  him  on  various  points  of 
learning,  I  will  venture  to  affirm  that  there  are 
no  parts  of  mathematical,  philosophical,  or 
medical  knowledge,  nay,  I  believe  I  might  justly 
say,  of  human  literature,  to  which  he  is  in  the 
least  a  stranger ;  yet  so  totally  insensible  is  he 
of  his  own  merit  that  I  am  confident  he  does 
not  know  that  he  has  any ;  and,  as  he  himself 
says  of  the  angels,  he  always  turns  his  head 
away  at  any  encomium ' ;  and  the  same  writer, 
addressing  the  Professor  of  Divinity  at  Glasgow, 
says  of  Swedenborg :  '  I  can  with  truth  assert 
that  he  is  truly  amiable  in  his  morals,  most 
learned  and  humble  in  his  discourse,  and  super- 
latively affable,  humane  and  courteous  in  his 
behaviour ;  and  this  joined  with  a  solidity  of 
understanding  and  penetration  far  above  the 
level  of  an  ordinary  genius.' 1 

Eighty  years  after  Swedenborg's  death  a 
silver  medal  was  struck  in  his  honour  by  the 
Royal  Swedish  Academy.  His  remains  still 

1  Document*,  vol.  ii.  pp.  522,  525. 
109 


SWEDENBORQ 

lay  in  the  Swedish  Church  in  London.  His 
scientific  and  theological  works  were  translated 
into  English  ;  the  latter  chiefly  by  the  Sweden- 
borg  Society,  established  in  London  in  1810,  and 
the  former,  including  the  Principia,  the  Animal 
Kingdom,  the  Ecwwmy  of  the  Animal  Kingdom 
and  the  Chemistry,  by  the  labours  of  Charles 
Edward  Strutt,  of  the  Royal  College  of  Surgeons 
in  Edinburgh,  the  Rev.  Augustus  Clissold,  M.A., 
of  Exeter  College,  Oxford,  and  Dr.  James  John 
Garth  Wilkinson,  of  the  Royal  College  of 
Surgeons.  Through  the  Swedenborg  Society 
of  London  the  theological  works  have  also 
been  translated  and  widely  disseminated  in 
various  modern  languages.  The  scientific  and 
philosophical  were,  however,  but  partially 
published  in  the  original  Latin  texts,  and  the 
English  translations  brought  out  in  the  middle 
of  the  last  century  have  practically  gone  out 
of  print.  About  the  beginning  of  the  present 
century  a  movement  was  made  by  the  Sweden- 
borg Scientific  Association  of  America  to  publish 
the  English  editions  of  the  Scientific  "Works  and 
to  procure  the  publication  and  translation  of  the 
still  unpublished  MSS.  preserved  in  the  library 
of  the  Royal  Academy  of  Sciences  at  Stockholm. 
In  the  year  1903  the  Royal  Swedish  Academy 
no 


THE    LAST    DAYS 

of  Sciences  at  Stockholm,  having  been  requested, 
through  the  Swedish  legation  at  Vienna,  to 
furnish  certain  information  regarding  Sweden- 
borg's  unpublished  MS.  De  Cerebro,  began  an 
investigation  of  the  Swedenborg  MSS.,  which 
resulted  in  the  appointment  by  the  Academy 
of  a  Committee  to  edit  and  publish  the  entire 
series  of  the  Scientific  and  Philosophical  works 
in  the  original  languages.  Latin  and  Swedish. 
The  Committee  consisted  of  the  following 
eminent  scholars :  Professor  Gustaf  Retzius, 
Alfred  GK  Nathorst,  Svante  Arrhenius,  S.  E. 
Henschen  and  Christian  Loven.  The  volumes  are 
being  issued  with  special  introductions  in  English 
by  the  respective  editors,  the  general  preface 
being  furnished  by  Professor  Retzius,  the  Chair- 
man of  the  Committee  ;  the  literary  editorship 
is  in  the  hands  of  Mr.  Alfred  H.  Stroh.  The 
initial  volume  of  this  stately  and  monumental 
edition  appeared  in  the  year  1907. 1  Since  then 
the  Cosmologica,  with  an  Introduction  by  Svante 
Arrhenius,  has  been  added.  The  introductions 

1  Emanuel  Swedenborg,  Opera  Qucedam  out  Inedita  avt 
Obsoleta  de  Rebut  Naturalibui  nunc  Edita  sub  Auspleiis 
Regue  Academice  Scientiarum  Suecia  :  I  Qeologica  et  Epiitola. 
Prefatus  est  Gustav  Retzius ;  Introductionem  adjunxit,  Alfred 
G.  Nathorst ;  EdicUt  Alfred  H.  Stroh,  Holmiae :  Ex  Officin 
Aftonbladet.  1907,  4to.  p.  344. 

Ill 


SWEDENBORG 

show  that  these  volumes  are  given  to  the  public, 
not  as  works  of  mere  historic  interest,  but  as 
containing  facts  and  principles  of  the  highest 
practical  value  to  the  science  of  this  age — 
principles  which  were  too  far  in  advance  of 
the  information  of  Swedenborg's  own  time  to 
be  then  appreciated,  but  which  are  now  being 
confirmed  by  constantly  accumulating  data, 
and  are  affording,  by  their  unique  and  profound 
method,  a  guide  of  the  greatest  value  for  the 
progress  of  science  in  the  future.  Meanwhile 
the  theological  works  of  Swedenborg  have  been 
translated  and  published  in  more  or  less  com- 
plete editions  in  many  languages,  including, 
besides  the  languages  of  Europe,  Japanese  and 
Hindi ;  and  they  are  read  by  scholars  and 
clergy  of  all  denominations,  Greek,  Catholic 
and  Protestant. 

In  the  year  1908,  at  the  request  of  the  King 
of  Sweden,  moved  by  the  desire  of  the  Royal 
Swedish  Academy  of  Sciences,  the  British 
Government  consented  to  the  removal  of 
Swedenborg's  remains  to  their  native  soil,  after 
their  repose  in  exile  for  one  hundred  and  thirty- 
six  years.  With  impressive  ceremonies  they 
were  taken  from  their  long  resting-place  in 
the  little  Swedish  Chapel  in  the  Minories,  in 
112 


THE    LAST    DAYS 

the  presence  of  the  representatives  of  the  two 
governments  and  of  the  Lutheran  Church  and 
the  Church  of  the  New  Jerusalem.  The  re- 
mains were  conveyed  to  Sweden  in  a  Swedish 
warship,  and,  after  a  suitable  public  reception, 
they  were  deposited  in  the  Cathedral  at  Upsala, 
where  by  vote  of  the  Swedish  Parliament  a 
monument  is  now  in  process  of  erection  in  the 
Bjelke  chapel,  immediately  across  the  nave  from 
that  containing  the  monument  to  Linnaeus. 


CHAPTER  IX 

EELATIONS  TO  MODERN  THOUGHT  1 

ALL  great  systems  of  philosophy  and  religion 
have  had  more  or  less  influence  on  the  contem- 
poraries of  their  founders  and  on  the  opinion  of 
succeeding  generations.  Socrates,  although  he 
did  not  found  a  school  of  thought,  yet,  by  his 
conversation  with  his  disciples  and  the  Athenian 
youth,  gave  a  trend  to  that  spirit  of  inquiry 
which  Plato,  his  disciple,  followed  in  his  works. 
Aristotle,  the  father  of  formal  logic,  worked 
out  a  philosophy  which  subsequently  dominated 
scholasticism,  and  played  an  important  part  in 
mediaeval  schools  of  philosophy.  In  more  recent 
times  Kant  fundamentally  influenced  meta- 
physical thinking,  on  the  question  of  space- 
and-time  relations;  while  Berkeley  practically 
founded  a  school  of  Idealism.  It  is  not,  there- 

1  At  the  desire  of  the  publisher  and  with  the  consent  of  the 
author  this  chapter  has  been  added,  being  furnished  by  the  Rev. 
Isaiah  Tansley,  B.A.,  with  a  view  to  showing  the  present  status 
and  influence  of  Swedenborg's  system  in  relation  to  modern 
thought  and  faith. 

114 


RELATIONS  TO  MODERN  THOUGHT 

fore,  remarkable  that  so  original  a  thinker  as 
Swedenborg  should  have  attracted  the  attention 
of  a  certain  class  of  minds.  As  shown  in  the 
preceding  pages,  he  was  a  pioneer  in  the  region 
of  metaphysical  and  scientific  speculation.  Like 
Newton,  he  had  a  love  for  framing  hypotheses ; 
and,  although  he  was  attracted  to  the  study  of 
the  ancient  philosophers,  particularly  Aristotle, 
and,  later,  Christian  Wolff,  yet  in  a  masterful 
way  he  cut  out  a  path  for  himself.  He,  however, 
founded  no  school,  and  in  his  own  country  his 
works  attracted  only  a  minor  attention.  It  was 
reserved  for  a  few  students  in  this  country  to 
recognize  his  great  claims,  and  to  translate  some 
of  his  earlier  writings  from  the  Latin;  and 
the  remarkable  revival  of  interest  in  his  scientific 
works  at  the  present  moment  indicates  that 
what  he  wrote  in  his  scientific  period  is  of 
commanding  interest.  It  is  yet  too  soon,  how- 
ever, to  say  what  the  results  of  this  renaissance 
may  be,  but  it  is  certain  that  Swedenborg  was 
far  ahead  of  his  day,  both  in  scientific  imagina- 
tion and  reach  of  ideas. 

But,  like  Newton,  Swedenborg  gave  his  mind 
at  a  later  period  to  the  study  of  the  Bible  and 
questions  arising  out  of  it ;  unlike  Newton's 
Biblical  speculations,  however,  the  works  which 


SWEDENBORa 

Swedenborg  wrote  attracted  thoughtful  and 
scholarly  minds  almost  from  the  first  moment 
of  their  publication.  So  distinctive  are  the 
principles  enunciated  in  his  theological  works 
that  they  were  bound  inevitably  to  give  rise 
to  a  separate  cult,  or  church.  This  is  generally 
known  as  the  New  Church,  popularly  termed 
"  Swedenborgianism,"  although  this  term  was 
distinctly  repudiated  by  Swedenborg.  Early 
students  in  this  country,  becoming  deeply 
impressed  with  the  marked  cleavage  between 
the  theology  of  Swedenborg  and  orthodoxy,  felt 
compelled  to  dissociate  themselves  from  current 
contemporary  opinion,  the  result  being  the 
formation  of  societies  for  worship,  as  has  been 
the  case  with  other  schools  of  religious  thought. 
Not  being  a  philosophy  merely,  but  a  distinc- 
tive theology,  a  separate  cult  was  a  natural 
consequence.  In  a  short  time  the  societies  of 
students  and  worshippers  became  an  organiza- 
tion whose  object  was  both  ethical  and  pro- 
pagandist. In  this  there  is  a  parallel  with 
Wesleyanism,  although  this  cult  was  not  based 
on  a  new  theology,  but  on  an  enthusiasm  for 
the  deepening  of  the  religious  spirit.  The 
particular  cult  which  we  are  dealing  with 
originated  in  London  with  a  few  men  some- 
116 


RELATIONS  TO  MODERN  THOUGHT 

what  more  than  a  hundred  and  twenty  years  ago  ; 
it  soon  gained  adherents  throughout  this 
country,  the  Continent  and  America,  and  to- 
day has  votaries  in  every  part  of  the  world. 

It  is  worthy  of  remark  that  the  theological 
writings  of  Swedenborg,  from  the  commence- 
ment, had  an  attraction  for  Anglican  clergy, 
among  whom  may  be  mentioned  the  Rev. 
Thomas  Hartley,  of  Winwick,  and  the  Rev. 
John  Clowes,  of  St.  John's,  Manchester,  two 
of  the  earliest  translators  of  his  works. 

Swedenborgianism,  other  than  a  formal  wor- 
ship and  particular  cult,  has  found  students 
amongst  distinguished  men,  of  whom  Flaxman, 
the  sculptor,  S.  T.  Coleridge  the  poet,  Dr. 
Garth  Wilkinson,  Coventry  Patmore,  Robert 
Browning,  and  others  may  be  named,  while  in 
America  Emerson  marked  his  admiration  for 
Swedenborg  as  a  philosopher  by  including  him 
in  his  Representative  Men.  The  cult  was  very 
early  carried  to  America,  where,  ever  since,  it 
has  attracted  thoughtful  and  instructed  minds. 

It  would  not  be  difficult  to  show  in  some  detail 
the  influence  of  the  principles  of  Swedenborg 
upon  the  theology  of  the  past  and  the  present 
were  this  the  place  ;  but  we  may  say  generally 
that  while,  on  the  one  hand,  criticism  and  a 

117 


SWEDENBORG 

wider  outlook  upon  problems  affecting  human 
nature  are  acting  destructively  upon  theological 
views,  the  trend  of  thought  in  a  more  rational 
direction  is  due,  we  believe,  to  the  principles 
and  teachings  of  Swedenborg  finding  their  way 
amongst  thoughtful  people.  These  principles, 
in  their  issue  are,  on  the  one  hand,  destructive 
of  old,  irrational  conceptions;  and,  on  the  other, 
eminently  constructive  in  the  sense  that  they 
give  us  a  philosophical  system  of  faith  which 
appeals  to  reason  and  the  feeling  for  the  fitness 
and  logic  of  things. 

Swedenborgianism  differs  from  orthodox 
Christianity  on  the  fundamental  ground  of 
the  nature  of  the  Deity,  as  based  on  absolute 
unity  of  function.  There  can  be  no  rational 
conception  of  Being  apart  from  unity  in  this 
regard.  The  unity  and  solidarity  of  the  universe 
follow  from  this,  while  the  forces  of  nature  are 
but  the  expression  of  this  unity  in  its  primal 
origin  in  the  Deity.  The  Incarnation  was  a 
particular  manifestation  of  Infinite  Being  on 
the  plane  of  matter  and  the  demonstration  of 
the  Divine  as  essentially  personal.  All  the 
functions  of  Being  are  derivable  from  the  latter 
fact — that  of  unity  and  personality ;  and  in 
Swedenborg's  teaching  it  is  the  antithesis  of 
118 


RELATIONS  TO  MODERN  THOUGHT 

that  distribution  of  Divine  functions  over  the 
mysterious  tri-personality  of  Being  character- 
istic of  orthodoxy.  The  central  feature  of 
Swedenborg's  teachings,  therefore,  on  this  point 
is  the  assertion  of  this  unity  of  Being  and 
function  in  the  glorified  and  Divine  Humanity 
of  Jesus  Christ  as  God  manifest ;  it  is  this  that 
renders  his  philosophy  unique  in  its  starting- 
point  and  claims. 

Without  discussing  the  bearing  of  this  on 
the  question  of  revelation  and  inspiration,  we 
may  remark  that  this  principle  imparts  to  his 
ethics  a  definite  form  in  its  reference  to  human 
relations.  And  here,  again,  Swedenborg  is 
divided  impassably  from  the  accepted  prin- 
ciples of  Christianity  on  the  question  of  salva- 
tion. Ethics,  that  is  duty,  with  Swedenborg 
is  altruism,  and  altruism  in  his  system  involves 
an  ideally  organic  whole.  The  functions  of  the 
individual  are  inseparably  involved  in  the  col- 
lective functions  of  the  race  ;  and,  as  the  whole 
is  conditioned  by  the  parts,  an  infinite  diversity 
of  uses  distributed  amongst  the  individuals  of 
the  State  will  result  in  an  altruistic  unity  and 
in  the  reciprocal  action  of  the  unit  on  the 
whole,  and  the  whole  on  the  unit. 

The  love  of  the  neighbour  is  the  basis  of 
119 


SWEDENBOBG 

Swedenborg's  ethics,  tlie  term. '  neighbour '  being 
extended  to  cover  all  human  relations,  the 
individual,  one's  country,  the  world  and  the 
Church.  While  this  in  no  way  ignores  inevitable 
race  differences,  it  demands  the  recognition  of 
the  common  heritage  of  the  human  family,  and 
holds  out  the  hope  of  an  ultimate  international 
unity  and  brotherhood.  This  is  the  end,  purpose 
and  climax  of  Swedenborg's  ethical  philosophy, 
and  is  the  very  outcome  of  his  conception  of 
Infinite  Being  as  the  Infinite  Good,  or  the 
summum  bonum. 

Whether  in  discussing  the  fundamental  and 
complex  problems  involved  in  conceptions  of 
Deity  and  immortality  or  the  question  of  duty, 
the  whole  of  Swedenborg's  philosophy  culmi- 
nates, then,  in  this  doctrine  of  Use,  or  Altruism, 
which  will  mean,  in  ultimate  practice,  a  perfectly 
ordered  world  and  the  happiness  of  the  race. 
While  Swedenborg's  doctrine  of  Use,  or  Altruism, 
bears  some  resemblance  to  Plato's  conception  of 
the  functions  of  the  state  and  the  individual, 
it  is  necessarily  dissimilar  because  of  their 
different  point  of  view,  and  the  mental  atmos- 
phere in  which  they  lived. 

Swedenborg  found  his  ideal  State  in  the 
government  and  organic  unity  of  the  Divine 
120 


RELATIONS  TO  MODERN  THOUGHT 

Kingdom,  in  the  heavens  of  which,  as  he  de- 
clares, he  had  conscious  knowledge  during  a 
long  period  of  unique  spiritual  experiences.  And 
in  bringing  the  knowledge  thus  gained  to  bear 
on  human  problems,  he  sets  forth  the  principles 
which  must  rule  in  the  human  organic  world, 
showing  that  a  true  philosophical  theology 
has  a  direct  and  intimate  bearing  on  life,  duty 
and  practice,  and  not  only  in  this  world  but  the 
world  to  come.  For  on  the  question  of  the 
immortal  life  Swedenborg  writes  with  reasoned 
and  strong  conviction,  the  outcome  of  his  unique 
experiences.  What,  in  the  Christian  view,  is 
vague  and  nebulous  he  renders  emphatically 
clear,  not  only  by  telling  the  result  of  his  own 
observations  in  the  other  world,  but  in  philo- 
sophic deduction  from  facts.  In  the  light  of  his 
argument  and  statements  man  stands  out  clearly 
in  the  other  life  as  a  perfect,  complete,  conscious, 
rational  being.  This  is  the  antithesis  of 
the  shadowy  conceptions  undeniably  current 
among  Christians  to-day.  It  co-ordinates  the 
mundane  life  with  the  spiritual,  indicates  the 
unity  of  mankind  in  both  worlds,  and  imparts 
a  true  dignity  and  grandeur  to  the  idea  of 
immortality. 

Man,  then,  is  a  spiritual  being  not  only  intrinsi- 
121 


SWEDENBORG 

cally  as  to  personality,  but  also  in  his  relation 
to  God  and  the  world.  He  is  not  an  accident 
of  evolution,  but  the  ultimate  factor  of  creation. 
The  world,  the  non-ego,  being  the  plane  of  man's 
existence,  it  is  pervaded  by  that  spirituality 
which  renders  it  intelligible.  In  fact,  for 
Swedenborg  the  whole  universe  is  the  expres- 
sion of  the  spiritual.  It  exists  from  the  Divine ; 
God  is  in  it  by  immanence  and  discreted  from 
it  by  transcendence,  and  therefore  infinite  love 
and  infinite  intelligence  are  manifest  in  it  and 
discernible  in  it ;  which,  working  in  men  accord- 
ing to  the  degree  of  each  one's  finite  reception 
shall,  in  the  fulfilment  of  the  ultimate  Divine 
purpose,  realize  a  spiritual  Kingdom  wherein 
justice,  peace,  righteousness  and  brotherhood 
will  be  the  permanent  elements.  If  this  be  a 
true  presentation,  in  brief,  of  some  of  the  chief 
points  in  Swedenborg's  theological  philosophy 
then  it  seems  explicable  why  its  range  of 
influence  is  not  inconsiderable,  and  why  it  has 
commended  itself  to  men  of  a  studious  and 
practical  turn  of  mind. 


122 


APPENDIX 

BIOGKAPHIES 

AN  exhaustive  and  trustworthy  account  of  Swedenborg, 
his  life,  his  work,  and  his  relations  with  his  contem- 
poraries is  to  be  found  in  the  Documents  Concerning 
Swedenborg,  in  three  volumes,  compiled  and  edited 
by  R.  L.  Tafel,  A.M.,  Ph.D.,  Swedenborg  Society, 
1  Bloomsbury  Street.  Excellent  biographies  are  also  : 
Swedenborg  and  His  Mission,  by  Benjamin  Worcester ; 
Emanuel  Swedenborg :  a  JJiography,  by  J.  J.  Garth 
Wilkinson ;  Hobart's  Life  of  Swedenborg ;  Emanuel 
Swedenborg :  A  Lecture  by  the  Rev.  John  Hyde.  Also 
Articles  in  Prospective  Review,  May  1850,  National 
Review,  1858;  Herder  on  Swedenborg  in  Werke  zur 
Philosophic  der  Geschichte,  vol.  xii.  pp.  1 1 0-25  ;  Goerres, 
Emanuel  Swedenborg,  Seine  Visionen  und  sein  Verhalt- 
niss  zur  Kirche,  1827  ;  Doerner,  Geschichte  Protestant- 
ischer  Theologie( Munich,  1867) ;  Sammlung  von  Urkunden, 
Dr.  J.  F.  Immanuel  Tafel  (Tubingen,  1841).  Also  the 
quite  recent  works :  Emanuel  Swedenborg :  his  Life, 
Teaching  and  Influence,  by  George  Trobridge  (Frederick 
Warne  &  Co.,  London  and  New  York),  pp.  140; 
Swedenborg,  af  Ernst  Liljedahl :  De  Storsta  Markes- 
mannen,  IX  Stockholm  (Hugo  Gebers),  p.  72  ;  Grund- 
dragen  af  Swedenborgs  Lif,  af  Alfred  H.  Stroh  (Stock- 
holm :  Nykyrkliga  Bokforlaget,  1908,  811),  p.  176  ;  A 
Great  Thinker  :  Review  of  Swedenborg's  Complete  Works. 
Rotch  Edition,  by  Mayo  Hazeltine  (Reprint  from  the 
New  York  Sun),  1908;  Le  Prophete  du  Nord:  Vie  et 
123 


SWEDENBORG 

Doctrine  de  Swedenborg,  avec  portrait  et  diagrammes, 
par  Charles  Byse  (Paris :  Librairie  Fischbacher,  33,  rue 
de  la  Seine). 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

A  Bibliography  of  Swedenborg,  Royal  4to.  Com- 
piled by  the  Rev.  James  Hyde :  Swedenborg  Society, 
London. 

The  works  of  Swedenborg  have  been  translated  for 
the  larger  part  into  English,  German,  French,  Swedish, 
Danish  and  Italian.  Single  treatises  have  been  pub- 
lished in  Russian,  Spanish,  Norwegian,  Dutch,  Welsh, 
Icelandic,  Japanese,  Arabic,  Hindi,  and  Esperanto. 

The  Swedenborg  Society,  1  Bloomsbury  Street,  London, 
publishes  a  uniform  edition  of  the  Theological  Works  in 
twenty-nine  volumes,  and  the  Scientific  Works  in  ten 
volumes,  several  of  the  latter  being  out  of  print  and 
new  editions  in  preparation. 

The  American  Swedenborg  Printing  and  Publishing 
Society,  3  W.  29th  Street,  New  York,  publishes  the 
Theological  Works  in  a  complete  and  uniform  edition, 
and  has  in  course  of  production  a  very  elegant  edition 
in  Latin,  and  one  in  Latin  and  English. 

A  considerable  number  of  Swedenborg's  works  were 
published  posthumously,  including  the  extensive  exposi- 
tion the  Apocalypse  Explained.  Thirteen  folio  volumes 
of  photo-lithograph  copies  of  the  original  MSS.  in  the 
Royal  Library  at  Stockholm  have  been  published  through 
the  donations  of  followers  in  England  and  America. 

The  collateral  literature  connected  with  Swedenborg 
and  the  New  Church  is  very  extensive.     The  entries 
under  '  Swedberg — Swedenborg '  in  the  Catalogue  of  the 
British  Museum  number  between  five  and  six  hundred. 
124 


APPENDIX 

PUBLISHED    WORKS 

IN  ENGLISH 
A.     THEOLOGICAL 

The  Apocalypse  Explained  according  to  the  Spiritual 
Sense.  Six  vols. 

The  Apocalypse  Revealed,  wherein  are  disclosed  the 
Arcana  there  foretold  which  have  hitherto  remained 
concealed. 

Arcana  Codestia.  The  Heavenly  Arcana  contained  in 
the  Holy  Scripture  or  Word  of  the  Lord  unfolded,  be- 
ginning with  the  Book  of  Genesis  i.,  together  with 
wonderful  things  seen  in  the  World  of  Spirits  and  in 
the  Heaven  of  Angels.  Twelve  vols. 

The  Athanasian  Creed  and  Subjects  connected  therewith. 

Brief  Exposition  of  the  Doctrine  of  the  New  Church. 

Canons :  or  the  Entire  Theology  of  the  New  Church 
(in  outline).  Posthumous. 

Delights  of  Wisdom  pertaining  to  Conjugial  Love. 

The  Coronis,  Appendix  to  the  True  Christian  Re- 
ligion. Treating  of  the  Four  Churches  on  the  Earth 
from  the  Creation  of  the  World,  their  Periods  and 
their  Consummation.  Of  the  New  Church  which  is  to 
succeed  those  Four,  which  will  be  truly  Christian  and 
the  Crown  of  the  Preceding  ones,  etc. 

Angelic  Wisdom  concerning  the  Divine  Love  and  the 
Divine  Wisdom. 

Angelic  Wisdom  concerning  the  Divine  Providence. 

Doctrine  of  Life  for  the  New  Jerusalem.  From  the 
Commandments  of  the  Decalogue. 

Doctrine  of  the  New  Jerusalem  concerning  Charity. 

Doctrine  of  the  New  Jerusalem  concerning  Faith. 

125 


SWEDENBORG 

Doctrine  of  the  New  Jerusalem  concerning  the  Lord. 

Doctrine  of  the  New  Jerusalem  concerning  the  Sacred 
/Scripture. 

The  Earths  in  our  Solar  System,  which  are  called 
Planets,  and  the  Earths  in  the  Starry  Heavens.  With 
an  Account  of  their  Inhabitants  and  also  of  the  Spirits 
and  Angels  there  :  from  what  has  been  seen  and  heard. 

Heaven  and  its  Wonders  and  If  ell :  from  things  heard 
and  seen. 

The  Intercourse  of  the  Body  and  the  Soul  (De  Commercio). 

An  Account  of  the  Last  Judgment  and  Babylon 
destroyed,  showing  that  all  the  predictions  in  the 
Apocalypse  are  at  this  day  fulfilled. 

The  New  Jerusalem  and  its  Heavenly  Doctrine, 
according  to  what  has  been  heard  from  Heaven,  to 
which  is  prefixed  Information  regarding  the  New 
Heaven  and  the  New  Earth. 

The  Spiritual  Diary  of  Emanuel  Swedenborg.  Being 
the  record  during  eighteen  years  of  his  supernatural 
experience.  Five  vols. 

Summary  Exposition  of  the  Internal  Sense  of  the 
Prophets  and  Psalms. 

The  True  Christian  Religion.  Containing  the  Uni- 
versal Theology  of  the  New  Church. 

The  White  Horse  mentioned  in  the  Apocalypse. 

B.  SCIENTIFIC  AND  PHILOSOPHICAL. 

The  Infinite,  and  the  Final  Cause  of  Creation. 
Motion  and  Position  of  the  Earth  and  the  Planets. 
Ontology,  or  the  Signification  of  Philosophical  Terms. 
Prindpia,  or  the  First  Principles  of  Natural  Things : 
being  New  Attempts  towards  a  Philosophical  Explanation 

126 


APPENDIX 

of  the  Elementary  World.  Translation  from  the  Latin 
by  the  Rev.  Augustus  Clissold,  M.A.  Two  vols. 

Principles  of  Chemistry,  with  other  Treatises.  Trans- 
lated by  Strutt. 

The  Economy  of  the  Animal  Kingdom,  considered 
Anatomically,  Physically  and  Philosophically.  Two  vols. 
Translated  by  J.  J.  Garth  Wilkinson. 

The  Animal  Kingdom.  Considered  Anatomically, 
Physically  and  Philosophically.  Two  vols.  Translated 
by  J.  J.  Garth  Wilkinson. 

Scientific  and  Philosophical  Treatises  :  on  Anatomy, 
Physiology,  Psychology  and  Philosophy.  Published  by 
the  Swedenborg  Scientific  Association. 

The  Soul ;  or,  Rational  Psychology.  Translated  and 
edited  by  Frank  Sewall. 

Miscellaneous  Observations  connected  with  the  Physical 
Sciences.  Translated  by  Strutt. 

On  Generation.  Posthumous.  Translated  by  J.  J. 
Garth  Wilkinson. 

C.   COLLATERAL  TREATISES 

Emanuel  Swedenborg  as  an  Anatomist  and  Physiologist. 
By  Professor  Dr.  Gustaf  Retzius.  Published  under  the 
Auspices  of  the  Swedenborg  Scientific  Association  :  Bryn 
Athyn  Pa.  1903. 

Emanuel  Swedenborg  sasom  Hjarnanatom  och  Fysio- 
logisk  Psykolog :  af  Alfred  H.  Stroh,  M.A.  (Dpsala. 
1909.) 

The  Cartesian  Controversy  at  Upsala,  1663-1689,  and 

its    connection   with    Swedenborg's   Nebular   Hypothesis. 

By  Alfred  H.  Stroh.     From  the  Proceedings  of  the  Third 

International  Congress  for  Philosophy  (Heidelberg,  1908.) 

127 


SWEDENBORG 

Swedenborg's  Influence  upon  Goethe.  Address  before 
the  American  Philosophical  Association,  1905.  In 
New  Philosophy  (Quarterly).  1906.  By  Frank  Sewall. 

Emanuel  Swedenborg's  System  der  Naturphilosophie 
besonders  in  seiner  Beziehung  zu  Goethe — Herderschen 
Anschauungen.  Inaugural  Dissertation  by  Dr.  Hans 
Schlieper.  (Berlin.  1901.) 

Swedenborg's  Physiology  of  the  Brain.  Address  of  Dr. 
Max  Neuburger  of  the  University  of  Vienna  before  the 
Convention  of  Naturalists  and  Physicists  in  Hamburg. 
Vienna  Medical  Weekly,  1901,  No.  44. 

Kant  and  Swedenborg.  Introduction  to  Kant's 
Dreams  of  a  Spirit  Seer  (translated  by  Emanuel  Goer- 
witz),  by  Frank  Sewall.  (Swan  Sonnenschein  &  Co.,jl900.) 

Der  Angebliche  Mysticismus  Kants.  Robert  Hoar. 
(Brugg.  1895.) 

The  New  Metaphysics  :  or,  the  Law  of  End,  Cause  and 
Effect.  By  Frank  Sewall.  (J.  Speirs,  London.  1887.) 

Swedenborg  and  Modern  Idealism  :  a  Retrospect  of 
Philosophy  from  Kant  to  the  Present  Time.  By  Frank 
Sewall.  (J.  Speirs.) 

The  New  Philosophy.  A  Quarterly  Magazine  devoted 
to  the  Interests  of  the  Swedenborg  Scientific  Associa- 
tion. Lancaster,  Pa.,  U.S.A. 


Printed  by  Hazell,  Watson  £  Viney,  Ld.,  London  and  Aylesbury,  England. 


